The claim already on the page
The draft may open with “approved in minutes — no credit check — funds today.” It may be live, queued, or in review. The question is not honesty but which words create a promise Google’s publisher policies penalize, and what can replace them before publication. Scope is claim wording and ad targeting, not lender selection, rates, fees, approval odds, or consumer-credit law.
Loans are not listed as prohibited content — the claims are the exposure
A common reaction is that loans are prohibited content. The retrieved policy text does not support that. Credit cards and loans appear as examples inside a personalized-advertising restriction for the United States and Canada: ads may not be targeted by gender, age, parental status, marital status, or ZIP code for credit-related products and services, banking, or certain financial planning and management services. That is a targeting rule, not a writing ban. The same source also bars using negative financial-status information — a low credit rating or high debt burden — to select personalized ads or collect cookie-list data.
Three claim patterns to audit
Start with the sentence's function, not its adjectives. Three patterns recur.
1. Approval outcomes
“Everyone approved” or “guaranteed approval” makes the publisher the source of a lending decision. The penalty table lists “Promising loans” as an egregious example: a concrete promise that cannot be fulfilled. It also lists promises outside the publisher’s control, such as a no-credit-check account opening. An approval outcome fits that shape: the lender decides, not the page. The deceptive-promotion rule reaches false, deceptive claims and misleading affiliation. Rewrite direction: tell readers to compare offers, check eligibility factors, read terms, and apply with the lender; attribute the decision to the lender. Delete the outcome claim; “high approval chance” only softens it.
2. No-credit-check hooks
“No credit check” sounds procedural, not promotional. The retrieved materials place it inside an egregious promise outside the publisher’s control. The point is not that the phrase is banned everywhere; a publisher may not promise a credit-review or account-opening result it cannot verify. If the destination’s process is unclear, do not imply a bypass. Rewrite direction: describe the application steps, say the lender sets its review process, and tell readers to confirm requirements with the lender. If the path cannot be verified, remove the hook rather than pair it with a disclaimer.
3. Amount, timing, and outcome
“$10,000 in your account today” combines amount, timeframe, and outcome. Each addition makes the claim more concrete, and concreteness is the shape the egregious tier describes: concrete, explicitly stated promises that cannot be fulfilled. A publisher cannot guarantee a lender’s amount, funding speed, or deposit. Rewrite direction: explain how amounts and timing are determined, what the reader must provide, and that the lender confirms terms. Do not invent illustrative figures; the retrieved materials contain no APR, fee, loan-amount, approval-rate, or funding-speed data.
The penalty gradient: precision changes the tier, not the exposure
The policy table distinguishes two examples. Egregious: concrete promises that cannot be fulfilled, at one strike per violation. Normal: promises “made but not clear or explicit,” at five violations per strike. Softening “guaranteed approval” into “approval made easy” may move the sentence between tiers, but it does not remove the promise. The editorial aim is to stop asserting an outcome the publisher cannot control.
| Policy example tier | What the example looks like in policy text | Strike weight stated in the retrieved table | Applies to loan-page wording how |
|---|
| Egregious | Concrete, explicitly stated promises that cannot be fulfilled; examples include “Promising loans” and a no-credit-check promise outside the publisher’s control | 1 egregious policy violation = 1 strike | A stated approval, funding, or no-credit-check outcome is high-exposure wording; softening it does not remove the promise |
| Normal | Promises made but not clear or explicit; example: “Graduate education should be affordable! Let’s go!” | 5 policy violations = 1 strike | Vague unsubstantiated appeal language remains penalized; ambiguity changes tier, not exposure |
The mapping is an inference: the table places “Promising loans” in its egregious column, but that row has no separate link. Verify the live policy page before relying on the example.
When the promise lives in the traffic source
Fixing the hero while the same promise sits in an ad, email, or affiliate link leaves exposure intact. For pages with AdSense for Search related-search units, the traffic source must accurately describe the destination. It must not promise products, services, or offers absent from the landing page or hard to find there, must not misstate those offers, and the landing page must look substantially the same as it does to organic visitors. An “instant $10,000 approval” ad landing on a general explainer fails that rule. Related-search units also must not invite accidental clicks, rely on deceptive implementation, or be the page’s only visible content.
The six-check pre-publication gate
Run this gate before publishing:
- Any sentence promising approval or funding?
- Any specific amount, rate, or timeframe the publisher cannot guarantee?
- Any credit-outcome hook carrying the argument?
- Does the traffic source’s promise exist near the top of the landing page?
- Do targeting settings avoid gender, age, parental status, marital status, and ZIP for credit content, and avoid negative financial-status signals?
- Is most of the page publisher content rather than ad or search units?
Any “yes” to the first three means rewrite or delete, not polish.
Where this audit stops
This audit cannot clear a page. Google publisher policy is a rulebook for ad serving, not US lending law; federal and state credit-advertising requirements were outside the retrieved materials; consult a qualified professional. Policy and enforcement change with page context and Google review. Treat the checklist as a drafting standard, not a compliance guarantee.
研究の知恵