Calling all clients - use the Ad Preview tool!

As a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Account Manager, I cannot tell you how many times a client has phoned me up, flapping, and said "I can't see my ads!" Now this could be down to the campaign being underfunded and under budget. If a PPC campaign isn't meeting its budget obligations, its ads will appear intermittently. Instead of showing for every search, your ad may show for 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 searches. Google's Ad Diagnostic Tool can also identify reasons why your ad isn't showing, such as the user’s IP address being located outside the defined geographical targeting of the PPC campaign or accidentally adding a pertinent search query as a negative keyword. More often than not, however, the client cannot see their ad because they are not using Google’s new AdPreview Tool. The AdPreview Tool has been specially designed for AdWords advertisers to check the appearance and positions of their ads.

When I mention the AdPreview Tool, clients always say “Why should I use this? Why shouldn’t I use what my customers are using?” They mean, of course, the plain old www.google.co.uk/www.google.com search engine. The answer is very simple. As a client looking for your ads, your search behaviour is different to that of the average Joe Bloggs, who is searching Google for a product or service. If the Google system notices any irregular search patterns from a particular IP address, it will begin to show bogus search results to this user. Ads may appear in lower positions or not at all. This is designed to be a safeguard against Click Fraud – if somebody is searching Google in an unusual manner, you don’t your ad to be exposed and vulnerable.

So, if you can’t find your ad on Google, make sure you have tried the AdPreview Tool before you pick up the phone and complain to Google Customer Services or to your PPC Account Manager. The AdPreview Tool can be found here ... bookmark it now!