Why Your Google Ads Are Getting Disapproved and How to Fix It

Your campaign went live, performed for a few days, then quietly stopped. No notification that felt urgent. Just declining impressions, then zero. If you have been through this, you know the frustration: something disappeared and it is not obvious why.

Ad disapprovals are more common than Google's documentation makes them sound, and the reasons are often not what account managers assume. Here are the 3 most common causes, the actual fix for each, and the step-by-step appeal process that actually works.

The 3 Most Common Disapproval Reasons

1. Destination not working.

This is the most common disapproval and the most annoying, because it is often triggered by a temporary issue that has already resolved by the time you investigate. Google's AdsBot crawler visits your landing page URL to verify it is accessible and functional. If the crawl returns a 404, a redirect loop, a server timeout, or a page that requires login to access, the ad gets disapproved.

The catch: AdsBot crawls on its own schedule, not in real time. A page that went down for 20 minutes during a server update may have been crawled during that window. The ad disapproves. The page comes back up. The ad stays disapproved until you request a re-review.

Common causes: your landing page is behind a redirect that AdsBot cannot follow, your server is blocking Google's crawler IP ranges, the page has recently moved and the URL has not been updated in the ad, or the page loads correctly in a browser but returns a different response to a headless crawler.

2. Policy misclassification.

Google's automated policy review misclassifies ad content. This is a real problem, not a rare edge case. Healthcare advertisers see it frequently. Financial services see it constantly. Even completely benign businesses in categories that sound adjacent to regulated industries can trigger automated misclassification.

The mechanism: Google uses machine learning to classify ad content against its policy framework. The model flags content that pattern-matches to restricted categories. If your ad mentions terms like "treatment," "specialist," "loans," or "investment" in specific combinations, automated review flags it even if the content is entirely above-board.

Misclassification disapprovals need human appeal. The automated re-review pathway rarely fixes them because it runs through the same model that generated the original flag.

3. AdsBot crawl failure due to technical blocking.

Distinct from "destination not working," this is a specific infrastructure problem. Your site is live and functional for regular visitors. But AdsBot, which uses a non-standard user agent string, is being blocked by your server, your WAF (web application firewall), your Cloudflare configuration, or your robots.txt file.

This is the disapproval reason that surprises the most people, because the site is clearly working. It is working for everyone except Google's crawler.

How We Resolved a Restaurant Client's Disapproval

Greek Street Unley ran into a destination disapproval after a website update. The agency that handled the site migration changed their server configuration, and part of that change involved rate-limiting non-browser user agents. AdsBot hit the rate limit, got a 429 response, and the ad was disapproved within 24 hours.

The restaurant's campaign for their private dining room stopped serving. No alert in the account at a prominent level. The business owner noticed 3 days later because the bookings had dried up.

The fix took 45 minutes once we identified the cause. We checked the server logs, confirmed AdsBot was being rate-limited, worked with the developer to add AdsBot user agents to the exception list, then requested a manual re-review through the Google Ads interface. The ad was approved within 4 hours of the re-review request.

The lesson: when ads disapprove with a destination reason and the page is clearly live, check your server logs before assuming it is a URL problem.

What to Check Before Re-Submitting

Run through this list before you click re-submit. Submitting for re-review without fixing the underlying issue just resets the clock without changing the outcome.

For destination not working:

• Open the destination URL in a fresh browser with no cache and no stored cookies. Does it load cleanly?
• Check the URL in the ad copy exactly, character by character. Copy errors are common after account edits.
• Use Google's own URL inspection tool in Search Console to see how Googlebot sees the page.
• Check your robots.txt file at yourdomain.com.au/robots.txt. Is AdsBot allowed? (More on this in a moment.)
• Check server access logs for AdsBot hits in the last 72 hours. Were they returning 200 or something else?

For policy misclassification:

• Read the specific policy cited in the disapproval notice. Not the general policy page: the specific clause.
• Identify which element of your ad (headline, description, landing page content, or URL) triggered the classification.
• Edit the ad copy to remove or rephrase the specific terms that pattern-matched to the restricted category.
• Do not rewrite the entire ad. Change the minimum needed to address the specific trigger.

For any disapproval:

• Confirm that your billing information is current and your account is in good standing.
• Check whether other campaigns in the same account have active disapprovals. Multiple disapprovals from the same policy issue suggest a systemic problem, not an isolated one.

The Formal Appeal Process, Step by Step

The in-account process for requesting a re-review is straightforward but specific.

1. Log into Google Ads. Open the disapproved ad.
2. Click on the status column where it shows "Disapproved." A panel appears with the disapproval reason.
3. If the reason is "Destination not working" and you have verified the fix, click "Request review." The automated system re-crawls the URL.
4. If the reason is policy-related and you believe it is a misclassification, do not click "Request review" immediately. First, edit the ad to address the policy concern. Then click "Request review" on the edited version.
5. For misclassification appeals that do not resolve through the standard pathway, use Google Ads support chat to escalate to a human reviewer. Be specific: state the policy cited, why you believe the classification is incorrect, and what evidence supports your position (e.g., your business is not a healthcare provider despite using medical terms in a general context).

The chat support pathway for misclassification is slower than the automated review, typically 1 to 3 business days, but it consistently produces better outcomes for legitimate businesses that have been incorrectly flagged.

The Most Important Preventive Step

Check your robots.txt file and verify that AdsBot is allowed. This single step prevents the third disapproval category entirely. The AdsBot user agents you need to allow are AdsBot-Google and AdsBot-Google-Mobile. A robots.txt that disallows all bots, or that disallows specific commercial bots, will block AdsBot.

The irony of this problem is that it often affects technically sophisticated websites where a developer has deliberately restricted crawler access to reduce server load or protect content. The restriction is well-intentioned. But it kills your campaigns quietly and takes days to diagnose if you do not know what to look for.

If you are managing Google Ads campaigns and want a proper account audit, see our Google Ads services or get in touch.