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Every media buyer has been in this situation at least once. You spend hours developing the perfect creative, warming up the account, launching the advertising campaign, hoping to receive fresh leads who will buy weight loss pills or deposit in a casino — but a few minutes later, a rejection message arrives or, even worse, an instant ban.

In this situation, everyone’s first thought can be: "What's wrong again? I did everything cleanly, the final ads and the landing pages are all whitehat!" But the truth is that Google evaluates more than what the advertiser serves "on the table". It sees the whole "kitchen" - every draft version, deleted ad, and even attempts to add a "grayhat" keyword to a pack of harmless keywords leading to whitehat.



This is what is called the “shadow audit” — a continuous process in which algorithms form an account’s reputation long before the “Publish” button is pressed. In today’s article, we’ll figure out how the algorithm thinks and what affiliates should do with this knowledge.

The Digital Footprint: Deleted Doesn’t Mean Forgotten

The main mistake of many affiliate marketers is to think that if they delete an unsuccessful creative or a campaign with "grayhat" keywords, then the account is clean again. But the experience of hundreds and thousands of affiliates shows that this is a fundamentally wrong position. Each action inside the advertising account leaves an indelible digital trace, which accumulates and forms a general "trust" or, if you like, "karma" of the account. The process is in many ways similar to the credit history of a bank client; if you miss a mandatory payment once, the stain remains forever, even if you then pay everything regularly. In short, now the bank has grounds (even if small) to doubt the reliability of such a client.

What Does Google’s “All-Seeing Eye” Monitor?



Google Ads algorithms index much more than just active ads; they look at absolutely everything. Below is a quick rundown of what the platform analyzes in your ad account:

- Campaign drafts: Did you create a campaign with aggressive headlines to see how it would look, and then just leave it in drafts without launching? The system has already recorded this. Your account received its first "minus" for intent.

- Edit history: If you first created an ad with trigger words like “casino” or “30-day weight loss guarantee,” and then edited it to something neutral like “popular slot machines” or “health tips,” the audit sees both versions. On top of that, Google can recognize the context of your static and video ad creatives, together with the message in the text placed in the ad creative. If the creatives are identical, but only a few elements often change, the system will — this may look like an attempt to bypass moderation. In other words, it can be considered an aggravating circumstance that may result in a ban for circumventing the system.



- Deleted ads and ad group: Did you delete the rejected ad? Information about it does not disappear from the account history either. In an actual sense, deleting such ads only confirms to the algorithms that the account owner may have tried to promote something prohibited.
- Ad previews: Even when you simply use the ad preview tool to see how a potential ad will appear in search results, data about the keywords and texts used gets analyzed by the algorithms.

With this information, we can clearly see that testing new approaches, especially in aggressive verticals, on newly registered ad accounts, is a game of Russian roulette. Any mistake can be fatal. This is why many media buying teams are switching or have switched to working with trusted agency ad accounts. Trusted agency accounts from YeezyPay come with a solid, positive history, giving media buyers more flexibility to test different campaigns, including those with aggressive ad creatives. Their established “positive history” allows them to survive immediate penalties that would arise due to the media buyer making minor errors during the testing phase.



Behavioral Analysis: Beyond Text and Images

Google not only scans ad content, but it also analyzes the behavior of the account owner as an advertiser. The search giant's AI has learned to recognize patterns typical of affiliate marketers, who in 99.9% of cases try to push grayhat offers. For the algorithm, you are not just a set of ads, but a profile with certain habits.

How Google "Thinks" and Assesses User Intent Within an Ad Account



Google's anti-fraud system looks for both primitive and complex chains of patterns. If a newly registered account immediately starts creating campaigns, frequently edits rejected ads to find the “right” wording, or tests blatant clickbait creatives, the system marks the account as belonging to a potentially fraudulent advertiser. As a result, future moderation for that account becomes much stricter.

In short, even if you decide to launch a completely whitehat campaign, the “trail” of past actions will follow the account, and they will lead to an increase in CPC rates and more frequent checks. In such situations, support is extremely important. When an account gets into an account “freeze” due to old tests, it is almost impossible to prove anything to Google support on your own. However, if you are using a trusted agency account from YeezyPay, you’re account manager can help to resolve these issues quickly, as appeals from large partner agencies carry more weight with Google.

What Testing Strategies Can Help Bypass the “Shadow Audit”?

So, what to do if testing is still necessary? With the development of Google AI, it is impossible to completely avoid “shadow auditing”, but you can minimize its negative impacts by following several rules of the so-called “digital hygiene” practices. These rules include;

- The sandbox principle: Never test new, aggressive hypotheses on the main, profitable accounts, where the advertising campaigns are already actively running. It is always better to use separate, maximally isolated ad accounts for this purpose. If such a “test” account gets banned, it will be a controlled loss that will not affect the main campaigns.
- Warm up ad accounts with "whitehat" campaigns: Before launching something grayhat, let the account run at least one small, completely whitehat campaign in a neutral topic that’s at least indirectly related to your main niche. This style of warming up will create an initial positive trace and increase the overall account trust level.
- Duplicate ads instead of editing: If an ad has been rejected, it is better not to edit it. Instead, you have to duplicate the entire ad group or even the campaign.



All necessary changes should be made in the copy, and leave the rejected group untouched or delete it. While these actions don't erase history, they can sometimes help you pass moderation more quickly.

- Gradually adding keywords: Do not upload the entire list of "grayhat" keywords at once. It is better to launch the advertising campaign with the most neutral keywords, and after the campaign has been running stably for several days, carefully add more aggressive keywords. At the same time, whitehat keywords should not be deleted; it is better to simply stop displaying ads for them.

Buying, farming, and warming up ad accounts for testing is time-consuming and expensive. It is much more efficient to have a ready-made infrastructure at hand. Using trusted agency accounts from YeezyPay for testing and main campaigns is way more efficient. These accounts are much more resilient to initial error; therefore, they allow you to focus on campaign optimization tasks rather than battling Google’s moderation system.

Conclusion

The “shadow audit” has always been, is, and will be part of the harsh reality of working with Google Ads. The platform tracks not only your target audience’s actions but also every move you make as an advertising account owner. The fate of your ad account directly depends on the history of actions within the account.

Algorithms do not have the concept of "deleted" or "draft" — every attempt to launch an aggressive creative, every edit with "grayhat" keywords, and even a preview of ads leaves a permanent mark in the history of the advertising account. This accumulated digital footprint directly influences the platform’s trust in your account, affecting click costs, moderation strictness, and the account’s overall lifespan.

That's why, experienced affiliates recommend using trusted agency accounts to test and runn campaigns with aggressive strategies. This way, you as the media buyer won’t go through the stress of frequent account bans or even spend weeks trying to buil a clean ad account history. Trusted agency accounts already come with an established whitehat history and high trust from Google Ads.