How to stay in compliance with Ad Grant rules
Every Google Ad Grant account needs to follow a few rules to stay in compliance. Failure to comply can lead to a short temporary suspension, requiring you to fix the problem then apply to be reactivated. New rules came into effect in 2018 and have only changed slightly since then.
Note that these are not the only policies you need to follow. There are many Google Ads policies that may or may not affect your account, depending on what you're advertising and to who. It's not possible to list all those here, so let's focus on just Ads Grants policies for now.
There are two related lessons in this course: about ad disapproval, and account suspension, that you should also read.
Campaigns must have at least two ad groups
A sensible rule, because people tend to underestimate how many separate topics they should be advertising, each requiring a separate ad group. Each ad group should have a tightly themed group of keywords, plus a single ad with text that closely matches the keywords.
Single word keywords are not allowed
There are exemptions for your own nonprofit's brand, and for medical conditions
There is also a list of exempted keywords at support.google.com/grants/answer/7587473. Just because a keyword is on that list doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be useful or relevant to you. In practice I've found some single word keywords on that list valuable: volunteering, adoption, trafficking, homelessness for example; but other keywords on that list rarely get results or even any traffic: donate, charity, NGO. They are too generic and unrelated to your mission.
Keywords must be on-mission and not generic
If you're advertising a library, don't use "free books" as a keyword. If you're a cancer charity, don't use "charity" as a keyword. Think what someone's probably looking for when typing words into a Google search, what your nonprofit offers, and whether your keywords relate to their search intent.
Google will usually pause these keywords itself, but don't wait for that to happen. Choose keywords carefully for relevance, and if you see high impression keywords getting irrelevant traffic or very low CTR, remove them yourself.
Tip: when viewing the keywords report, refer to the Landing page experience column. A below average score might indicate that the keyword's not on-mission.
Maintain a 5% Click Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is simply the percentage of people who are shown your ad, then click it.
Ad Grant rules state that the account-wide CTR must not fall below 5% in any two consecutive months. In practice it is highly unlikely that will happen. Aim high, for a CTR above 10%. In the absence of any other performance data, CTR is a useful indication of whether your ads are persuasive or not.
The screenshot below shows a nutrition nonprofit achieving a very good 13.18% account-wide CTR over the last 30 days.
If CTR is low across your account, please do not assume you need to delete entire low-CTR campaigns, or ad groups, or all low CTR keywords. Often you can course-correct by simply pausing one or two high-impression but low-CTR keywords; or by making improvements to ad copy or adding extensions. There is a separate lesson in this course about raising CTR.
Keywords must not have a Quality score of 1 or 2
Ad Grant accounts must maintain keyword quality scores of 3 and above, and pause keywords that score only 1 or 2. Non-scored keywords can be ignored, they are not an issue for compliance.
The old method for staying in compliance was to set up an automated rule that paused low quality keywords daily; however these days low quality keywords are automatically paused by Google Ads so you don't need to actively check for them. You can see if this has happened by viewing the Campaigns > Change history report.
There is a separate lesson in this course about how to check and improve keyword quality scores.
Campaigns must be geo-targeted
You can't simply advertise to the entire world. Campaigns must be targeted to whatever areas are relevant to your services and audience: that might be one town, a radius of 50 km from your office, a state or county, or one or more countries. Even if your nonprofit has an international reach, it probably wouldn't be sensible to show the same ads to everyone.
What if you're advertising to the US to get donations, but providing services in other countries? That's something humanitarian aid nonprofits do all the time. Simple: you geo-target the country that's relevant to your audience of donors.
You need to add at least two sitelink extensions
Two wouldn't be enough, I usually create 10-12 sitelinks. Adding them at account level rather than campaign level can simplify your structure... but consider whether specific campaigns with different audiences or different locations, might need different sitelinks.
The screenshot below shows two sitelink extensions. Note that Google has renamed extensions, it's now calling them "assets". A confusing change!
You must set up conversion tracking
You have 90 days in which to set up conversion tracking and switch to a conversion-based bidding strategy. But why wait? Make that a priority. There's a whole section of this course that walks you through setting up conversion tracking.
Once set up, there are further rules:
- Each campaign must get at least 1 conversion per month. In practice, you need a lot more than that because conversions are the fuel that keeps your campaign performing well.
- Account-wide conversion rate should not exceed 15%. The reason for this is that conversions help the system to identify what the most-invested, most interactive visits have in common: that won't work if every other visit is considered a success. Check the last 30 or 90 days, how high has it been?
Here's a high-spending Ad Grant account that's getting plenty of conversions, at a sensible conversion rate of 5.88% over the last 30 days. In other words, 1 in 17 visits lead to a successful outcome.
You must respond to the annual survey
This should be sent by email to account users early in the year. If you receive it, act on it immediately. However, I'm not aware of it being sent out the last couple of years.
Compliance myths
Back in 2018 Google brought in new rules for Ad Grant accounts, which switched the focus from doing regular maintenance, to maintaining quality. Unfortunately it's common to hear people stating the old, redundant rules as if they still applied. These are commonly shared myths about Ad Grant compliance:
Do I need to login once every 30 days and make an edit every 90 days?
You hear agencies say this a lot, but this was an old rule that was replaced in 2018 with new rules about maintaining quality.
Yes it is a Very Good Idea to regularly check on campaign performance, and to keep the account well optimized, and refresh ads and keywords whenever necessary. But it's no longer a compliance issue.
Do I need to create two ads per ad group?
No, you should only create a single Responsive Search Ad (RSA) per ad group. Creating more than one RSA is unnecessary, inefficient and slows down machine learning.
Google's official Ad Grants compliance guide is sadly outdated at the time this course was published. Please ignore its advice to create more than one ad per ad group.
Note that Dynamic Search Ads work differently: in a DSA ad group you should create multiple ads so that you can test multiple descriptions. Usually I create three or four per ad group.
Is it difficult to achieve 5% CTR?
Back in 2018 when the new Ad Grant rules changed, achieving 5% CTR was a challenge for many nonprofits. But fast forward to 2024 and very few accounts score anywhere near that low. To fall that low you would need to be using very generic / off-mission keywords, or you're bidding mainly on highly competitive keywords. To give the example of the only nonprofit I've seen struggle with this in years: they offer small business loans; the keywords are expensive and their main competitors are banks and lenders, not other nonprofits.
Do I need to reapply each year?
No, once you have the grant it carries on from one day to the next, no need to renew or reapply for it.
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