Two notices about Russia appeared at the top of a Google Merchant Center help page, and Search Engine Roundtable reported today that Google had "posted a new message" pausing ads for advertisers based in Russia. The wording of both notices, however, matches statements Google first published in March 2022, and Google's own policy documentation dates the global pause for Russia-based advertisers to March 10, 2022. No new announcement from Google about Russia could be found on its Google Ads or Merchant Center announcement pages on October 22, 2026.

In Short

A website that tracks Google reported that Google had just stopped ads from Russian advertisers, because warning boxes showed up on a Google help page. The same words were already used by Google in March 2022, when it stopped showing ads to people in Russia and then stopped Russian advertisers from buying ads anywhere. So the rule is not new: what changed is that the old warning boxes appeared on help pages again, and nothing so far shows the policy itself was altered.

What the help page shows

The source material is a capture of the Merchant Center help article "Supported structured data attributes and values," a technical reference that maps Merchant Center product attributes to schema.org properties for merchants who mark up their product landing pages with structured data. Above the article's introduction, the capture shows two boxed notices.

The first reads: "As part of our recent suspension of ads in Russia, we will also pause ads on Google properties and networks globally for advertisers based in Russia."

The second reads: "Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we will be temporarily pausing Google ads from serving to users located in Russia."

Nothing else on the page refers to Russia. The body of the article continues with attribute tables and JSON-LD examples for single products, bulk pricing, sale prices, member prices, shipping, returns, energy efficiency and unit pricing - content that has no connection to the notices sitting above it.

The phrasing is the first clue to the notices' age. "Recent suspension" and "will be temporarily pausing" are the language of an announcement made in the moment, not of a policy that has been in force for four and a half years. Both sentences are written in the future tense, describing steps that, according to Google's own records, were taken in early 2022.

The Search Engine Roundtable report

Barry Schwartz published the report on Search Engine Roundtable at 7:05 am on October 22, 2026, under the headline "Google Pauses Ads For Russian Advertisers & Serving Ads To Russians." According to the post, "many of the Google help documents added two new boxes to the top," and Google "just posted a new message in the Google Ads and Merchant Center help documentation." The only page the post links to is the Merchant Center structured data article.

Schwartz himself raised the possibility that the notices were not new. "I thought these were all paused and not running but maybe I confused this, because Google just posted a new message four and a half years later?" he wrote. The post cites a discussion on X as its forum source and links to Search Engine Roundtable's own March 2022 coverage of the original pause.

Two claims in the post could not be confirmed from the material supplied. The capture shows the notices on one Merchant Center page only, so the statement that "many" help documents carry them, and that they appear in Google Ads help documentation as well, rests on the post's description. Nor is there a timestamp anywhere in the capture showing when Google placed the boxes on the page. A text retrieval of the same Merchant Center page by PPC Land at about 15:10 UTC on October 22 did not return either notice, although help-center banners can be rendered separately from article text, so that result does not establish that the notices had been removed.

What Google decided in 2022

Google's restrictions on Russia came in three steps over less than two weeks in 2022. According to reporting by MarTech at the time, Google began suspending ads on February 27, 2022, initially targeting Russian state-owned media. On March 3, 2022, the suspension was extended to all ads serving users located in Russia. PPC Land reported on the pause of ads to users in Russia on March 6, 2022, noting that Google classified the war in Ukraine under its sensitive events policy and that, the same week, ads were also stopped in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions because of sanctions.

The third step reached beyond Russia's borders. Google's policy page "Update related to Russian ads (March 2022)" is dated March 10, 2022, and according to that page, following the suspension of ads in Russia, Google also paused ads on its properties and networks globally for advertisers based in Russia. That is the sentence now visible again at the top of the Merchant Center article. In practice, the March 10 decision meant an advertiser based in Russia could not reach audiences in any country through Google's ad products - not only users inside Russia. According to Search Engine Land's coverage at the time, Microsoft Advertising, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat had announced their own restrictions linked to Russia's actions in Ukraine, but Google appeared to be the first to also stop Russia-based advertisers from reaching global audiences.

The same Google policy page has since been updated with information unrelated to ad serving. According to the page, OOO Google, the company's Russian subsidiary, filed for bankruptcy in Russia in June 2022 and is no longer operational. The bankruptcy court began the liquidation phase on October 18, 2023, and a court-appointed liquidator now manages the entity under the Insolvency Law of the Russian Federation.

What followed on the publisher side

The advertiser restrictions were followed, more than two years later, by a cut on the publisher side. In August 2024, Google deactivated Russia-based AdSense accounts, with July 2024 earnings scheduled as the final regular payment between August 21 and 26 and remaining balances to be disbursed within 60 days, subject to payment holds and thresholds. That move ended monetization for Russia-based publishers and creators through AdSense, including YouTube channels that relied on it.

Google's broader country restrictions have shifted in the meantime. When Google removed Syria from its advertising sanctions list in August 2025, the remaining sanctioned territories named in PPC Land's coverage included Crimea and the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Russia as a whole is not on that sanctions list; the restrictions covering it sit in the separate March 2022 policy update.

Why the notices matter to advertisers

Help-center banners are not a policy channel in themselves, but they are what merchants and account managers read when they troubleshoot a feed or a disapproval. A notice that says Google "will" pause ads for Russia-based advertisers, displayed above documentation used daily by people working in Google Merchant Center, reads as a fresh change unless the reader already knows the 2022 history. Search Engine Roundtable's own report shows how easily that reading follows.

For agencies and multinational advertisers, the practical scope of the measure has not changed on the evidence available. Ads still do not serve to users located in Russia, and accounts of advertisers based in Russia remain unable to run ads on Google's own properties or on its networks, such as the Google Display Network, anywhere in the world, according to the March 10, 2022 policy page, which carries no notice of reversal. The open question is narrower: why the 2022 wording reappeared on Merchant Center pages in October 2026, and whether Google intended to republish it or whether a help-center template brought back old banners. Google had not addressed the notices publicly at the time of writing.

The episode also reflects how much of Google's advertising policy now lives in help-center text rather than in announcements. PPC Land has tracked a series of such quiet documentation changes this year, from Google dropping "Next" from the Merchant Center name in July 2026 to policy wording that shifts without an accompanying blog post. When a notice appears with no date, the burden of establishing whether it is new falls on whoever reads it.

Russia remains a constrained market for Western advertising platforms more broadly. Data flows to Russian recipients have drawn regulatory action in Europe, including the Dutch Data Protection Authority's EUR 100 million GDPR fine against Yango's parent company in April 2026 for transferring Finnish and Norwegian users' data to Russia.

Timeline

  • February 27, 2022 - Google begins suspending ads from Russian state-owned media.
  • March 3, 2022 - Google pauses ads from serving to users located in Russia, citing the war in Ukraine.
  • March 6, 2022 - PPC Land reports Google has stopped serving ads in Russia, along with ad stops in Donetsk and Luhansk.
  • March 10, 2022 - Google pauses ads on its properties and networks globally for advertisers based in Russia, according to its "Update related to Russian ads (March 2022)" policy page.
  • June 2022 - OOO Google, Google's Russian subsidiary, files for bankruptcy in Russia.
  • October 18, 2023 - The Russian bankruptcy court begins the liquidation phase for OOO Google.
  • August 2024 - Google deactivates Russia-based AdSense accounts, with July earnings as the final regular payment.
  • August 2025 - Google removes Syria from its advertising sanctions list; Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk remain.
  • April 1, 2026 - Dutch DPA fines Yango's parent EUR 100 million over data transfers to Russia.
  • July 2026 - Google drops "Next" from the Merchant Center name.
  • October 22, 2026, 7:05 am - Search Engine Roundtable reports two Russia notices at the top of Google help pages, describing them as a new message.
  • October 22, 2026 - The captured Merchant Center help page shows both notices, worded identically to Google's March 2022 statements.

Summary

Who: Google, advertisers based in Russia, users located in Russia, and Search Engine Roundtable, whose October 22, 2026 report described the notices as new.

What: Two notices appeared at the top of a Google Merchant Center help page stating that Google pauses ads for Russia-based advertisers globally and pauses ads serving to users in Russia. Their wording matches Google's March 2022 statements, and no new policy announcement was found.

When: The notices were reported today, October 22, 2026. The underlying decisions date to March 3, 2022 (users in Russia) and March 10, 2022 (Russia-based advertisers globally).

Where: Google Merchant Center help documentation, specifically the "Supported structured data attributes and values" article; the pauses apply to Google properties and networks worldwide.

Why: Google tied the original pause to the war in Ukraine. Why the 2022 notices reappeared on help pages in October 2026 has not been explained by Google.