Once upon a time Google decided to give advance notice of upcoming policy updates – probably to keep them safe legally. It was a good call, because it would be unreasonable for advertisers to check the myriad of policy pages on a daily basis.

But it seems Google doesn’t care too much about the page. I only found it by accident, and I doubt advertisers were ever emailed about its existence. Yes, it might have been mentioned on Google’s Adwords blog, but most advertisers don’t even know about the blog, let alone feel they have to read it every day.

Now, to make things worse, Google have changed the URL of the page, making it even more obscure. And I’ve just found out the new page isn’t even indexed in Google!

Here’s all it says on the old page:

This page shows upcoming changes to the AdWords advertising policies. When appropriate, we also send out service announcements and notifications to advertisers who are directly impacted by our policy changes. We hope that you find this page useful.

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=release_notes.cs

(the rest of the page is blank, and there’s no link to or mention of the new page)

The new page is here:
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=release_notes.cs

It is linked to from this page:
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1316546

But not indexed!

I feel sorry for any advertisers who lose their accounts because they weren’t aware of rule changes, because Google:

• has a continually changing and hard to use navigation system for their help files
• doesn’t contact advertisers directly about policy changes that could see their account permanently closed
• doesn’t even index a page as critical as the AdWords Policy Change Log