If you have PPC campaigns running, whether you are manage them yourself, have someone in-house or outsource to an agency, you want to be sure that your are showing for relevant searches, you are putting money into this and naturally you want to be sure you are not just getting traffic, but relevant traffic that is likely to interested in your products and services.

But how do you know this? Some people will search Google to see if they come up for relevant terms, and you don’t it raises the question;

“Why am I not my seeing Google ads?”

It’s a fair question, if they are paying for their website to be shown in the search results, and if they don’t see them how can you be sure if the person managing your account is doing their job properly?

Before you jump to conclusions, about this first you will need to;

1. Check the keywords are in the campaigns

Ask the person managing the PPC campaigns, it could be that a keyword to capture that hasn’t been added, it can happen, maybe it was missed or it’s an industry term they don’t know, for instance how many people know what an escutcheon is?

The first thing to do is check to see if you can show up for it by either searching the keywords, or use the ad preview and diagnosis to see if your ads show up for the terms you want, if they do then great, if not then they can be added.

If you find there are keywords setup to show for the searches you want, there are a number of reasons you may not be able to see your own ads, starting with:

2. You didn’t get into that auction

It could be that everything is there for you to show, but when you searched you didn’t make it into that auction, this will likely be because;

1. There are times when competition is higher, and you won’t show, you don’t need to worry, the majority of the time your ad will be seen, it was just unfortunate this time
2. The keyword is ‘below first page bid’ this means most of the time, this means the majority of the time, the CPC isn’t enough to get you on the first page of results, you can raise the CPC if it’s going to be worth the extra cost, otherwise it’s better off being left.

3. You’re restricted from seeing your own ads

Image source: http://www.massingenuity.com/2012/06/11/what-you-cant-see/

You may find that the IP’s has been blocked, it’s a great way of stopping inflated impressions from searches where there is no purpose (if you see your ad, are you going to click it?).

This will have been set up because inflating impressions can have negative effects and lead to higher CPC, for example;

• You search for your ads and the impressions go up, but you don’t click on them (because why would you?)
• Impressions go up, but clicks won’t lowering Click Through Rate (CTR).
• If the CTR drops, it can make your ads and keywords seem less relevant.
• Lower relevancy can then result in higher CPC.

All you accomplish with this is raising the CPC and potentially restricting how often your ads are seen.

If your IP hasn’t been blocked, it could be Google or Bing has seen unusual activity from them, high search volume with little interaction, or high usage of your website and stopped showing ads as it sees your searches as irrelevant as it says on their support page;

Searching for your own ad on Google:

If you repeatedly search for your own ad using Google Search but never click it, you may stop seeing it. That’s because Google’s system detects the IP address of your computer and stops showing you ads that it thinks you aren’t interested in. Remember to use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to view your ad as it appears in Google search results instead of performing a regular search. It prevents you from racking up impressions while you try to locate your ad.

4. Low search volume keywords

Some keywords you suggest with might seem like a great idea, but if are classed as low search volume it means you (and no one else) will show because there are so few searches for it, ads won’t trigger for this keyword, the only way will is if the search quantity increases.

5. The campaign is limited by budget

If a campaign is limited by budget, you won’t be showing for searches as often as you can, either because the ads are being spaced so you show throughout the days, so there will be times you don’t show, or you are out of budget for the day and won’t show anymore until the next day.

If you have campaigns that are performing well like this, you can raise the budget so you will show more often and increase clicks to your website.

6. Outside of target area

And finally, if your campaigns are set up to target specific locations, if you aren’t within that location, you won’t be eligible to see your ads.

Final thoughts

Now you should have an idea of what this problem might be if you can’t see your ads, you need to remember that searching to try and bring up your ads isn’t good for your campaigns as it can result in lower performance, if you’re concerned you aren’t showing up for searches, ask the person managing the campaigns what searches you want to show for, you can then work from there.

If you are ever unsure about your PPC campaigns, you can always talk to us and we will help solve any problems you might have.