Google AdWords shuts down many accounts with little notice! Lessons you can learn to avoid your own business meltdown

The buzz on the forums this week: Apparently many advertisers, including some long-timers, were caught in a global account clean up by Google AdWords. This got me

thinking about a few possible weak spots in my own business.

As I understand it, it looks like Google enforced some of their policies, new and old, by sending out an automated warning to account holders and, it appears, then terminated some AdWords accounts. For those who are unfamiliar with AdWords: Adwords is Google’s ad engine where customers can buy ads in Google’s search and/or content network.

Since this account cleanup did not happen to me I don’t have first hand experience as to why it happened, but it reminded me, as business owners we need to prepare for these things and have backup plans ready to go.

Here is a list of a few things that come to mind that could change overnight and send your business into a spiral. As you read through, I’m sure you will start to think of single points of failure of your own as well. Remember, you might not get any warning:

1) Suppliers come and go – With the economic environment as it is, we have all seen banks, car companies and chain stores hit the dirt. So what about your suppliers? Even if they appear sound, do you have a plan if the unthinkable happens?

• How vulnerable is your business - Let’s say your hosting company went under, do you have backup? Can you port your business over so there is little time wasted on the change?



• Do you use credit card clearing - If that goes under for some reason what can you do? Are there alternative companies you know about? What happens to transactions pending or customers that may want a refund?



• Designers and marketing companies – Are you relying on others for all your work? If you are outsourcing, do they have the manpower to cover your business needs if they come into trouble?

2) Policies change – Business practices you’re doing today might be fine, but tomorrow it might be against the rules. Here is a couple of places you can get caught quickly and end up in trouble:

• Taxes and income tax – Online commerce is changing rapidly. Many countries are changing the taxes they want you collect and where you need to claim those gains. Years ago it was much simpler.



• Company policies – When dealing with suppliers, some change their policies often. When a change happens on their end, they expect you to know what they changed and make those changes immediately. These changes might even mean you need another supplier to keep doing your business model.



• Legal changes – This ties in with company policies a bit, but changes in the legal system make for changes in supplier policies and the polices you need on your web site. Without being up-to-date you can find yourself in hot water.

3) Employees – If an employee leaves, are others in your office able to pickup the workload, know how to do the job or even know the passwords to do it? In short, do others know enough that if one person goes or just gets sick that you can still get the product to market on time? Often time’s business owners forget that employees can also be a single point of failure.

4) Income streams – How many ways do you get your income? Employees usually have a single income stream; if they lose their job, that’s it. A business on the other hand, can (and maybe should) have multiple income streams. If one stream brings in all or over 60 percent of your revenue, you have a single point of failure if you lose that stream of income (unless, of course, you can run your business on the other 40%).


So what lesson should we be reminded of this week?

• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – If you can, diversify. If you rely on one singe way of advertising, as in the AdWords fiasco, having multiple areas to run advertising would have helped. Look for single point of failures such as employees, suppliers, and the like and fix them.



• Learn to be dynamic - Business is never start-up, let it run and collect the money. Things change, no business will last forever and no business can keep doing same thing indefinitely. When you learn to be dynamic by looking for opportunities to expand and grow, and keep an eye out for markets, I think you will find an important lesson many of the car companies did not pick up on.



• Have a back up plan, not just backups – Always as yourself “What if?” What if my building lease was pulled? What if my servers went down? What if questions will help you develop a plan if necessary and an action plan of what to do to put it in place.

Do I know why Google decided these particular accounts should be shut off from their advertising or if any of them will get their accounts back? No Idea. I would only be guessing, but really that’s not the point. The point of this whole article is get you thinking about single points of failure and “what if”.

To protect your investment, your business and your money, you need to look at how to keep your business diversified, single points of failure within your business as well as find solutions so you don’t have to deal with the potential of losing your whole business.