We’ve written before about Googles Adwords policies but today a piece of interesting news – Google has settled out of court in a case brought by the Christian Institute.
Google had originally banned the ad which read “UK abortion law: Key views and news on abortion law from the Christian Institute.”
The case was brought under the Equality Act 2006, Google has now agreed to allow the ad to show up for the keyword “abortion”.
Google said:
The issue of abortion is an emotive subject and Google does not take a particular side. Over the last few months we have received a number of representations about our abortion ads policy and we decided to conduct a review to make sure it was fair, up to date and consistent with local customs and practices.
Following the review we have decided to amend our policy, creating a level playing field and enable religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way.
The settlement allows organisations to place adverts in a “factual and campaigning way” but from the screenshot below it appears that most advertisers are offering treatments. Is this what the Christian Institute intended to happen? I very much doubt it.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
Read some similar posts
- My (your) Google Adwords wishes
- Google AdWords says “Tickets to Honolulu are £599 right now, if I were to go on a random weekend in May! That’s nuts… the economy is great if you have a job”
- How Google targets new Adwords customers
- AdWords exact search keywords coming to Analytics in May
- AdWords launches Search Funnels to show all keywords in conversion funnel
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Patrick, I don’t think that Christian Aid and The Christian Institute are the same thing so you might want to alter the paragraph above the Google Ads screenshot.
Were they showing abortion ads before? From this paragraph it sounds like ads like CI’s were the only ones being excluded:
If so, then I think the outcome would be exactly what they wanted.
Google’s whole “Don’t be evil.” motto is severely impaired when they can’t even recognize or formalize what evil is. It sounds like Google is pro-abortion and even anti-religion…this particular issue is the main reason I wouldn’t want to work for Google or sell-out a company to them.
I think they should give away all of the ad spots on the first page, or even the first few pages to adoption agencies instead of the extremely gross idea of Google making money on abortions. Even the democratic party in the USA now agree on the need to reduce the number of abortions.
Come on Google Shareholders! Put up some vote at the next stockholder meeting to not get any of your profits from this at-best-controversial business! Even a vote to Google-grant nonprofit non-abortion agencies to the saturate the first few pages of the SERP’s would be a great improvement!
If you are considering selling your company to Google and are similarly grossed out by this, you might consider holding out until they adopt some grant proposal to reduce the facilitation of abortion sales on Google. That’s my current plan if it looked like I would have to sell a company to Google. I think a complete ban on abortion ads on Google would have to come from a stockholder vote.
Leave a Comment (registration is optional)