You set up your Pay-per-click ad, chose your keywords carefully, begin using a payment method. You start getting clicks, possibly even some sales, then wham. You get a notice from Google saying your ad is not relevant enough, you either start paying much more per-click, or have your campaign stall.

Congratulations, you have been Google slapped. It has happened to the best of us. Your business status does not matter to the machine called Google search engine. You could own a million-dollar franchise, and still get the slap. What do you do? You either pay more for each click, (lots more) or you pull your ad, and revise it. Some companies do not mind the slap. In fact, you can enter just about any keyword, that could be considered general merchandise, and a Pay-per-click ad will display.

Notice as well, that it is always the huge, well-known retailers that do this. They can afford to include sometimes several million keywords in their campaigns. A few may be paying as much as a hundred-thousand dollars a month, for their keywords. The slap can come at any time. What is working fine today on the Web, may be considered obsolete tomorrow. People who use Pay-per-click, are forever testing and tweaking their campaigns. One must stay "current," with whatever the machine accepts.

This is not written to be a "rant" against Google. They have made many people, hundreds of millions of dollars, and will continue to do so. If you have gotten the slap, take heart. You are not alone. Others have felt the sting.

It actually is a good thing, for the more relevant an ad is, the easier it is for people to find specific products or services. When searchers get good results from their keywords entered, Google looks good. Surfers are happy. People make money. No-one gets slapped.