Adwords campaign rejected. For Google Matomo javascript is a Malware

General questions
64

I have an Agency account and any site with Pikwik and Matomo .JS files are getting flagged with Malicious Software and all accounts are suspending ads.

Can someone offer any assistance with an existing Google case ID that shows that this is not malware?

It seems that Google does not like competing analytics platforms, and is trying to strong-arm anyone not using Google Analytics.

We need to all do something about this. There is no reason we shouldn’t have the choice to use our own software.

65

@David_Scarpitta - just sent you an email to gather more info. Thanks for your patience.

Here is an update on the status: we had 3 new reports of this issue occurring in the last 2 months. It seems the issue is not the same as before as there are less people affected. So If you experience this issue and haven’t yet commented here, or emailed us at hello@matomo.org (and heard back from me) then please contact us now!

66

Thanks for the email.

I replied with everything you requested. However, I will be honest that there are probably people that aren’t reporting the issue and are just converting to GA.

It’s painstakingly difficult for them to address this one site at a time. I have had about 10 sites now that this has happened on. Even if they lift the one site, and we get it cleared, does that mean we have to go through process to clear every account?

Is there a way you guys can contact someone higher up, and that we can reference when dealing with this issue?

Thank you for your help.

67

Hi Matthieu,

Any update on this ridiculous situation that Google is putting us through?

Thanks
David

68

November 2nd and we are running into the same issue. I work at a digital marketing agency and we are onboarding a new client. Our Google campaigns were disapproved and upon investigation, we’ve discovered it is because the client uses Matomo. It is frustrating that Google is being so uncooperative and seems to be using this to their advantage; it seems illegal and unethical. Have any solutions been found?

69

Same problem here - started new campaign in Google Ads, and all ads are disapproved.

70

@mrsashko @Bethany_Pavlock we have just reached out to your email to ask the additional info.

@David_Scarpitta sorry we haven’t heard back yet, but will again ping our contact and try get this escalated. if nothing changes in the next few weeks, we will have to try something new and reach to people in a different way/channel maybe.

71

Finally got around to re-enabling Matomo, just the script, not the Tag Manager so far. I’ve had a live GA campaign for 4 days now and everything seems to be fine. Will let you know if anything changes and I’ll test out the Tag Manager now.

72

I’ve just had my campaigns Disapproved again due to Malicious software.

73

Hi @nicw

We’ve just reached out vie email to for some additional information.

75

Hello Matomo team and community. This issue is now resolved for me.

I’m using the following fixes to ensure campaigns are no longer being rejected by Google Ads.

In my .htaccess file within Matomo directory, I’ve added the following to send an X-Robots-Tag to bots and crawlers.

#Exclude the following locations from being Indexed by setting X-Robots-Tag
#Set environment variable for a specific path
SetEnvIf Request_URI “(.*?)” ROBOTS_NONE
#Send custom header if the environment variable is set
Header set X-Robots-Tag “noindex, noarchive, nosnippet, nofollow” ENV=ROBOTS_NONE

As a secondary precaution (and recommended by the Matomo team from another user) I’ve created a robots.txt file containing the following disallow rules.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Disallow: /addons/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /media/dashboards/
Disallow: /media/files/
Disallow: /media/js/mautic-form-src.js
Disallow: /themes/
Disallow: /translations/
Disallow: /vendor/

This seems to have fixed the disapproval issue for me and both of these could be incorporated within the Matomo installation package to ensure they get deployed for other users.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy Christmas and New Year!

76

Well, it took longer than usual, however all ads are rejected once again, so the fix is not a long term solution I’m afraid.

Happy New year all.

77

Hi @nicw

Thanks for your patience in this. At the moment we only have one other user that is still experiencing this issue. If you continue to experience this issue, could you please let us know?

For now (Since this seems to not be a widespread issue again) could you contact Google Ads support and see if they can help resolve this for you?

If anyone else is still having this issue - please let us know by replying to this forum port.

Thanks

78

Assuming everyone has resolved this Richard can you advise what may have been dome to overcome the issue ? I may try OWA or Plausible to see how they do.

79

Think I may have found the problem caused by a small modification of the script used to collect some additional data.

80

Hi Team,

Just posting about my situation which occurred this morning;

I have some 59 websites in Matomo of which I have Ad campaigns for 19 of them. Most campaigns are currently active however there are some currently paused.

All 19 campaigns were disapproved this morning due to malicious software.

I contacted Google Ads and they advised me it was the Matomo script that has caused the flag for disapproval. Upon asking Google how they qualify it as malicious I was then asked for a clean report in Search Console, which was provided. Google advised they would take investigation offline and I am waiting to hear back from them. (24-48 hours).

Some campaigns we cannot wait that long to get the Ads back up and running so I have setup removing the script from our sites. Also my business partner is concerned that if the Ads algorithm thinks the Matomo script is malicious what is the Google Search algorithm going to do.

81

Update for anyone interested: Had to remove the Matomo script from my sites before Google would review my Ads. For each Ad account, I have had to ask for a manual review as they kept claiming the Matomo script was still on the website.

In addition, I have two Ad accounts which have been suspended due to Circumventing Systems policy. For these accounts Google has shutdown all communication so I can’t even find out what the specific issue is. Very frustrating. Particularly since it seems its all based on Google’s misinterpretation of the Matomo script.

82

Antony,

Sorry to hear of all your troubles. Sadly, I don’t see this issue going away any time soon. Google is monopolistic and non-responsive to its customers, paying or non-paying. They don’t have to answer to anyone because we use their services regardless of how they treat us.

This issue gets to the heart of why Matomo exists.

I realize this probably isn’t an option for you, but the best solution is to stop using Google. I’m rarely in the advertising realm, but are there viable alternatives?

84

Just had a client have their Google Ads denied saying that Matomo was malware, thing is as well that the plugin hasn’t been active for over 3 months on this site and certainly has no Matomo JS scripts, so Google must be going on old scans.

Is really shameful how Google treats a lot of users and companies - clearly feel threatened.

1 Like
85

This is sad to see this is happening. As a developer and marketer with Get Found I really want to use Matomo with everything we do, but if Google keeps doing this, we are up against a wall.

I feel like someone at Matomo should take this very serious and file a suit (maybe even class action) to get this monopolistic monster deflated a bit.

I really want to see some change here folks. Feel free to reach out if I can help.

1 Like