If you’re running a Google Ads campaign, and you’ve chosen the keywords you want to advertise on, you’d expect that when you type one of those keywords into Google, you’d see one of your ads come up, right? Not necessarily – as you’ve probably already discovered if you’re reading this article. Google Ads is a complicated beast – here are a few of the reasons why you might not be seeing your ads:
1. You may not have enough budget
If you’re advertising on keywords that are searched for very frequently, but you have a small budget, then Google will not be able to show your advert all of the time. If Google knows that 10,000 searches are made for a phrase in a day and that you typically get a 2% clickthrough rate on your ads, then if your ads were shown all of the time, that would bring you 200 clicks. Maybe the clicks cost on average 50p – making your daily cost around £100. But you may only have a budget of £10 – in which case your ads may be shown approximately 10% of the time.
2. You may not be in the right geographical area or searching at the right time of day
If your ads are targeting a specific geographical region, and/or targeting specific times of day, check that you are in the right location and searching at the right time of day to be able to see your ads! Even if you haven’t specifically set your ads to target particular locations or scheduled them to only show at certain times of day, if you are using one of Google’s machine learning-based bidding strategies, they will be choosing to show your ads more often and in a higher position when they think you are likely to convert, and buy the product or service. If Google doesn’t think you’re likely to convert (which you probably aren’t, after all – you don’t need to buy your own product or service), then you may not be shown the ad at all!
3. Your keywords may have a low-quality score or be too general or non-commercial
Google doesn’t want advertisers to run ads that will give visitors a poor experience. They want advertisers to run ads against well-targeted keywords, with well-written ads and a strong landing page that covers the topic that the visitor searched for. If you’re advertising on very general keywords – ‘shoes’ for example – there’s probably no way you will ever get a high-Quality Score because the keyword is very general, meaning it’s going to be hard to predict exactly what the client wants to see in the ad and the landing page – so general keywords will often have an inherently low-quality Score that you can do little about. If Google thinks that the search query is non-commercial, that people are searching for information rather than to buy something, then they may choose not to show any adverts at all, or only one or two. If you have a low-Quality Score, you may have to pay a high cost per click to get your ad shown, making it uneconomical to run that ad – or your ads may simply not be shown at all. It’s likely to be far more productive to pick more specific, commercially orientated keywords (‘red strappy sandals’ as opposed to ‘shoes’) and write well-targeted ads and landing pages to go with them.
4. You keep on not clicking on your ads
If you keep searching for phrases that trigger your ad, and not clicking your ad (of course you’re not going to click your own ad, because it costs you money!) then Google may decide to show you different ads next time around. So – ironically – the more you search for your ad, the less you may see it!
How can you get to see your ads more often?
Bearing in mind the points above, you could:
- Increase your budget and/or your bids (if you’re still bidding manually, which you’re probably not!) – but of course we would only recommend this if it makes good business sense
- Improve your Quality Score (target more specific keywords, work on improving your clickthrough rate, ads and landing pages)
- Use the ‘Ad Preview & Diagnosis’ tool in Google Ads to find out why your ads aren’t showing and what you can do about it
- Not worry about the fact you can’t see your own ads – as long as visitors are seeing your ads, clicking on them and making enquiries – remember that it’s what your visitors can see that counts.
- Call Ascendancy for help on 01952 462845!
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