Google Shopping Bans Weapon Ads

Published July 3, 2012 | By Robbi Drake

In a strange but true happenstance, Google has banned guns and gun parts, as well as knives and other items from Google Shopping, the now for-pay advertising method. It’s their advertising, however it appears to be causing some consternation among shoppers since, when you search it in Google.com, it goes to Google shopping who then tells you that you can’t find it there. Interesting chain of events. See the Search Engine Land article here.

All of this would be a lot less noteworthy were it not for the things that you CAN buy. Google tells us in their short diatribe that their decisions as to what goes into the now for-pay shopping search engine will be based upon-

“policy principles” :

4) Google Shopping should be compatible with Google’s brand decisions.

Google Shopping must be compatible with company brand decisions. Our company has a strong culture and values, and we’ve chosen not to allow ads that promote products and services that are incompatible with these values. In addition, like all companies, Google sometimes makes decisions based on technical limitations, resource constraints, or requirements from our business partners. Our policies reflect these realities.”

Now here’s the really interesting and moderately amusing part of that.. while you can’t advertise or buy a gun on Google Shopping, you can absolutely search for cheap viagra and get hundreds of returns, you can seek out Make meth and get back a “Crystal Meth–I can’t stop Liking this” tee shirt and a “Meth like mom used to make” coffee mug, and you can get , low cost wine, and you can even seek out “making bombs” and get an answer in a mug that shows you a diagram of a bomb to make at home, or a tee shirt that applauds and advocates, making it “rain bombs”. So based upon their statement, we must come to the conclusion that: