You now have six months to argue with Google Ads

There is an ad sitting in a Brownsburg garage door company's Google Ads account that Google disapproved in November. Nobody in that office has opened the screen since. As of last Tuesday, nobody there can fix it from inside the account either.

Google changed its appeals rule on July 21, 2026. The Advertising Policies help center now carries one new line: "Starting July 21, 2026, the option to appeal a policy decision directly from your Google Ads account will not be available for policy decisions made more than 6 months prior."

Six months runs from the day Google made the decision, not the day you found out about it.

Do the subtraction. Today is July 26. Anything Google disapproved or suspended before January 26 of this year sits outside the in-account window. You can still write to support about those. Support is slower and you are arguing from a worse position.

What Google changed on July 21

The Appeal button in Policy Manager used to sit there with no deadline on it. An ad disapproved in 2023 still showed the button. Owners clicked it years late and sometimes won.

Google added a clock and told almost nobody. One line in a change log titled "Update to Appeals Limits (July 2026)," dated July 21. Google published no blog post and no explainer video alongside it.

The suspension side reads the same way now. Google's account suspensions page says advertisers have "at least 6 months from the date of account suspension to submit an appeal."

Why is my Google ad disapproved when nobody told me?

Google emails the address on the account. On the accounts I open for the first time, that address belongs to a former office manager or to an agency the shop stopped paying two years ago. Google sends the notice. Nobody at the shop reads it.

The overview screen will not flag it for you either. One disapproved ad in an ad group that still has two running ads shows you a green account. Google keeps spending your budget at the same rate it always did. The ad Google stopped is usually the one you wrote with a price or a guarantee in the headline, which is the one you would most want back.

Google is not going to call you about this. The only person checking that screen is you.

There is a quieter version of the same problem. Under Google's limited ad serving policy, Google cuts how often your ads show on certain searches without disapproving a single ad. Your ads stay green and your impressions fall. That restriction has its own appeals form, and the same six-month arithmetic is worth applying to it.

The three-minute check

Do this today, on a laptop, with the account open.

1. Sign in to Google Ads. Open Troubleshooting, then Policy Manager.
2. Click the Policy issues tab. That tab lists everything Google has acted on.
3. Read the date on each row. That date, not today's date, is what the six months runs from.
4. For anything inside six months, click Appeal. Google asks whether you are disputing the decision or telling them you fixed the problem. Pick the honest one.
5. While you are in there, check the email address on the account under Admin, then Account settings. If that mailbox belongs to someone who no longer works for you, change it.

Google reviews an appeal in about a day. You get three unsuccessful appeals per ad before Google pushes you to support, so read the policy it cites before you file. Filing the same appeal three times in one afternoon burns all three.

What a stalled disapproval costs you

One disapproved ad in a healthy ad group is cheap. Google shifts those impressions to your other ads and your budget still spends. You lose the test, not the money.

A suspension is the whole bill.

Google suspended a Carmel med spa in February over a misrepresentation strike, because their landing page carried no business name and no address. They were spending $2,400 a month on search and booking roughly twenty consultations off it. The owner decided an appeal was not worth the afternoon and went back to mailers. They have booked nothing from Google since February, and their appeal button disappears in August.

Google is not shy about the volume. In its 2025 Ads Safety Report, Google said it blocked 8.3 billion ads and suspended 24.9 million advertiser accounts during the year, 3.3 million of those in the United States. Google also says its newer AI review cut incorrect suspensions by 80 percent, which is Google grading Google. Either way, suspensions are common enough that "it will not happen to me" is not a plan.

What if you are already past six months?

Contact Google Ads support and appeal through them. Google wrote the new limit against appeals filed "directly from your Google Ads account," and the notice says nothing about closing the support route.

Do not open a fresh account instead. Google's circumventing systems policy treats a new account created to get around a suspension as its own violation, and Google suspends new accounts it traces back to a suspended one. That shortcut costs you the second account too.

Set a reminder for the first Monday of every month and open Policy Manager for two minutes. That is the entire discipline. The garage door company in Brownsburg had eight months to click one button, and the button was there the whole time.

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Sources

#	Source	What it backed up
1	Fix a disapproved ad or appeal a policy decision	The July 21, 2026 six-month limit, the Policy Manager appeal path, the roughly 24-hour review, and the three-appeal cap per ad.
2	Google Ads account suspensions overview	Advertisers have "at least 6 months from the date of account suspension to submit an appeal," and the strike system behind suspensions.
3	Circumventing systems	Opening a new account to get around a suspension is itself a policy violation.
4	Limited ad serving	Google restricts impressions without disapproving ads, and that restriction has a separate appeals form.
5	Google Ads kills appeals for policy decisions over 6 months old	The change log entry title and date, and that Google published no blog post or video alongside it.
6	Gemini blocked more than 99% of bad ads before they ran in 2025	The 2025 Ads Safety Report figures: 8.3 billion ads blocked and 24.9 million advertiser accounts suspended.