Now, inevitably, when I’m working with a client, I will get a phone call and they will say, “You know what? I just did a search for my ad.
Why Aren’t My Ads Showing Up on Google?
There are a number of factors we need to look at. In this instance, we are going to use one of our favorite examples, and that would be a search for a “plumber”. If my client did a search and one of their keywords was “plumber” and they typed that into Google and they’re not seeing their ad, here are some reasons why.
Number one. Is their ad eligible and showing?
Now, that might seem very obvious to check out, but sometimes that happens where maybe it’s a new campaign and you put an ad in, maybe the landing page isn’t hooked up correctly. Whatever the reason might be, maybe that ad is not showing up. Obviously, that’s something to double check.
That’s number one. Go in and make sure that the actual ad is showing and make sure that it’s eligible to show.
If that is not the case, another reason could be the budget.
For instance, if this client looking up plumber has a $300 a month budget, then they would have $10 a day budgeted to their campaign. The question that needs to be asked is has that budget run out?
Often, a client will be looking for their ad maybe after work and they’re looking at 10 o’clock at night. There’s probably a good chance (if the campaign is set up correctly) that the budget has already been depleted.
Meaning once that budget is used up, your ads will no longer show. If that $10 has already been used up, those ads will not show for the rest of the day and that happens quite a bit.
A third reason could be, and this happens quite a bit as well, if I am that plumber and I’m looking up my own ad, and I see my ad, then I try it later and see my ad, and then I try it the next day and I see my ad a few days later, what happens is Google is taking notice of each time you look up an ad or you look up a search term.
Now, are you clicking on those ads? If you keep searching “plumber” and you see the same three ads and you’re not clicking on any one of them, Google’s taking note of that and they’re going to say, “You know what? They’re not finding what they’re looking for. We are going to serve up a new ad to them.”
If you’re looking up your ad and you’re not clicking on it, which obviously you don’t want to do, otherwise you’re just wasting your own money, Google makes note of that and they will stop showing your ads to you.
I’ve had clients in the past (because we neglected to have this conversation with them upfront) where they are searching every day to see whether their ad is coming up. Then, all of a sudden, it’s not showing up anymore and they start to lose their minds because they’re thinking that their ads aren’t being shown.
A couple of things that you can do to help prove this to them is going to your statistics. Take a look at the stats from the previous day. Then you can say, “You know what? Your ad was shown 58 times. Here’s how many clicks it got.”
If it has conversions, obviously those can be proven to that client and they are seeing those on their end.
You can even set up reporting for them to send them reports each and every day. Or maybe they have access to the account and they can just see the stats (just as long as they’re not going in and changing anything without telling you).
Use Google Ads Preview Tool
Another thing to explain to them is to tell them not to do a search on Google for their terms, but to go into the account, click on Tools, click on Ad Preview and Diagnosis. Here they can enter in the search term that they want to search for and the location.
Make sure the location is somewhere where their ads are allowed to be shown. If this client is in Las Vegas and they’re searching for their ads in Minnesota, the ad will not show up. Make sure that that’s taken into account.
But those are just a few reasons why when you search for your keywords on Google, why your ads may not be showing up.
Hope that helps.