Google Ads disapproved or limited one of your ads

What this means

Every new or edited ad goes through a policy review before it can show. Review usually takes about 1 business day. After it, each ad gets a status. The ones that matter here:

• Eligible: the ad meets policy and can show to everyone you target.
• Eligible (limited): the ad can run, but not in every situation. Google gives trademarks and gambling-related content as examples.
• Eligible (limited all locations): policy and your location settings together stop it showing in your target places. It can still reach people interested in those places.
• Disapproved: the ad or the page it links to breaks a policy. It never shows, so it gets no impressions (times your ad appears).

Assets such as sitelinks and images have their own version: Approved and Approved (limited).

This check looks at every live ad (an enabled ad in an enabled ad group and campaign) and flags any that isn't plainly approved.

Why it costs you money

A disapproved ad costs nothing directly, since it doesn't show. The cost is what it was meant to do.

If an ad group has 2 ads and 1 is disapproved, you're running on half your ad copy without knowing it. If its only ad is disapproved, the whole ad group goes dark. Your keywords sit there with bids and budget and win nothing.

Limited ads are subtler. They keep spending, but some of the audience you planned for never sees them.

There's no single formula. If the ad group went dark, compare its weekly spend and conversion value (the sales Google Ads tracked for it) in the 4 weeks before the disapproval with the weeks since. The drop in conversion value is roughly the sales you lose each week until it's fixed. For example, an ad group spent about $70 a week and brought in $280 of sales before its only ad was disapproved. Since then it shows $0 and $0. That's about $280 of sales a week you're missing, from spend that earned a 400% ROAS (return on ad spend: $4 back for every $1). The campaign may still spend that $70 on its other ad groups, so the lost sales are the number to watch. To check what your own ad group was earning, put its old spend and conversion value into the ROAS calculator.

How to check your account in 2 minutes

1. Click Campaigns, open the Campaigns drop-down, and click Ads.
2. Look at the Status column.
3. Hover over any status that isn't plain Eligible. Google shows the policy involved.
4. For more detail, add the Policy details column: click the columns icon, choose All columns, open Attributes, tick Policy details, and click Apply.

To see every policy issue in one list, go to Tools, then Troubleshooting, then Policy manager.

When a status is nothing to worry about

• It's still Under review. That's normal for a fresh ad. PerfoAds skips ads Google hasn't given a verdict on yet. Check again the next day.
• The limit is expected. Some products have location rules. Under Google's alcohol policy, an ad that targets places where alcohol ads are allowed and places where they aren't is marked Eligible (limited). On ads like that, limited may be the best status you can get.
• The ad is paused, or its ad group or campaign is. These come from your own settings. A paused ad shows as Paused. An ad in a paused campaign or ad group shows as Not eligible. PerfoAds only judges ads that are set to run.
• The ad group has other approved ads that carry the load, and the disapproved one was an old test you meant to remove anyway. Remove it to keep things tidy.

How to fix it

1. Read the actual reason. Hover the status, then select Read the policy. Don't guess from the policy name alone. "Destination not working" and "Trademarks" need very different fixes.

2. If the ad breaks the rule, edit it. On the Ads page, hover the ad and select Edit. Change the text, image or link to meet the policy, then Save. Google reviews the edited ad again automatically.

3. If the problem is your landing page, fix the page. For "Destination not working", Google lists errors like 403, 404 and 500 that its crawler (the bot that checks your page) hit on your site. Make sure the page returns a normal 200 response (the code for "page loaded fine") in every country, on common browsers and devices. Then either appeal, or edit the ad, so it gets reviewed again.

4. If you think Google got it wrong, appeal.

• In Policy manager, on the Policy issues tab, select Appeal next to the ad.
• Under Reason for appealing, choose Dispute decision or Made changes to comply with policy.
• Select Submit.

You can also appeal from the Ads page: tick the ad, select Edit, then Appeal policy decision.

5. Track the appeal. Policy manager shows its status, such as In progress or Review complete.

6. Don't keep resubmitting the same thing. Each ad gets 3 appeals. After that, you have to contact Google Ads support. If an appeal fails, make a small edit to the ad text or final URL (the page the ad sends people to) and save. That forces a fresh crawl. When you appeal the same ads again, wait at least 24 hours, or Google may mark it as a duplicate. Since July 21, 2026, decisions older than 6 months can't be appealed from your account either, only through support.

Store owners: Shopping ads and product listings also go through Merchant Center. It gives each product its own status: Under review, Processing, Approved, Limited or Not approved. This check covers ads in Google Ads. Product disapprovals need fixing in Merchant Center.

Check it with a query

If you or a developer use the Google Ads API, this query lists live ads that Google has judged and not fully approved. The status values it can return include APPROVED_LIMITED, AREA_OF_INTEREST_ONLY and DISAPPROVED. Run it through the Google Ads API, or in a Google Ads script (code you paste into your account) with AdsApp.search. You can test it first in Google's query validator.

SELECT
  campaign.name,
  ad_group.name,
  ad_group_ad.ad.id,
  ad_group_ad.policy_summary.approval_status,
  ad_group_ad.policy_summary.review_status,
  ad_group_ad.policy_summary.policy_topic_entries
FROM ad_group_ad
WHERE ad_group_ad.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND ad_group.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND campaign.status = 'ENABLED'
  AND ad_group_ad.policy_summary.approval_status NOT IN ('APPROVED', 'UNKNOWN')