Google's anti-Chinese herb policy demands removal of advertising Bi Yan Pian from East Earth Trade Winds website

I've previously written about Google's War on Chinese herbs. As a recap, East Earth Trade Winds advertises on Google Adwords -those little ads that pop up when you search for something. In April of 2013 they had their account shut down for three weeks for advertising Epimedium - a Chinese herb that is legal to import and legal to use. In Chinese medicine Epimedium is considered a Kidney Yang Tonifying herb. East Earth had to remove that product listing from the site in order to be able to advertise on Google Adwords again.
Now the Google anti-Chinese censors are at it again. This time the East Earth Trade Winds account violated Google policy by advertising Bi Yan Pian - a common remedy for allergies and stuffy nose. Once again this product is legally imported and there are no restrictions on the sale of this product by the FDA. It is simply that Google's censors don't approve of Chinese herb products.

Here's the violation that they pointed out to me:


"Please be advised that your ads are getting disapproved for promoting Bi Yan Pian on the Landing Page which is an Unapproved Pharmaceuticals monitored by Google. Please remove it from the Landing Page so that we could approve the ads. Please find attached a screenshot of the highlighted term on the Landing Page of your website which needs to be removed.  "

Googles anti-Chinese herb policy restricts legal Chinese herb products.

Instead of removing the product East Earth Trade Winds removed the product name Bi Yan Pian and changed the name listing to the English translation "Nose Inflammation Pills". As of this date we don't know if this will pass their censorship. Bi Yan Pian, by the way, is not a "pharmaceutical" - it is an herbal supplement.
Google  arbitrarily restricts the sale of Bi Yan Pian. There are others who advertise the same product and do not seem to have any restrictions.
I suggest that people use yahoo or bing for their search engines instead of Google. Yahoo and Bing do not seem to have an anti-Chinese herb policy.

Google reverses site suspension for East Earth Trade Winds

After weeks of having our site suspended from Google Adwords we are now allowed to advertise again. Google had suspended us for advertising items such as Epimedium, Pe Min Kan Wan, and Flu Away - all products which are legal to import and sell. In the case of Epimedium and Pe Min Kan Wan we have carried these since our inception in 1985. We have carried Flu Away since it was first introduced about 13 years ago.

One of our main complaints was that while our site was suspended from the Adwords advertising program our competitors, including giants, like Amazon, were allowed to sell the exact same products. In our opinion it is unlikely that Google would suspend Amazon from their Adwords program seeing that Amazon must spend millions each week with Google Adwords. In any case, this was an unfair trade restriction. If Google is going to enforce a policy then they should enforce it across the board and level the playing field for all businesses.

While we appreciate being allowed to continue our advertising again we still would like to see Google change their policies regarding banning legal Chinese herb products. We'll be using Yahoo and Bing for our searches now. We hope you do also.