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Why Are Your Ads Not Showing?

Your Google ads aren’t showing. That’s alarming, to say the least.

If you’re not seeing your ads on Google search, this might not be reason for alarm: You should only use the Ad Preview tool to check for your ad.

But if they’re not showing in the Ad Preview tool? That’s a problem.

The good news: There’s more than likely a perfectly good explanation as to why your Google ads aren’t showing.

1. Your payment didn’t go through

If, like a lot of advertisers, you’re paying for your Google Ads account via automatic payments, Google will charge you when (1) you reach your pre-set payment threshold or (2) you reach the end of your current billing period. It depends on which happens first.

Obviously, in order for these transactions to go smoothly, the payment information linked to your account needs to be valid and up-to-date. If Google can’t charge you, your ads won’t show up in the search results.

2. Your bids are either too high or too low

As you may know, you have to set a daily budget for each of your Google Ads campaigns. If the maximum cost per click (CPC) bid you set for a particular keyword exceeds the budget of the campaign it lives within, your ads won’t show for queries that match to that keyword. Make sure your account is free of these conflicts between campaign budgets and keyword bids.

At the other end of the spectrum, your Google ads may not be showing because your bids are too low. Your ad rank for a given auction depends on your quality score for the keyword you’re bidding on as well as the bid itself. If you navigate to the Keywords section of your Google Ads account, you can use bid simulators to estimate the impact of increasing your bids by different amounts.

3. Keyword search volume is too low

If a keyword you’re targeting drives little to no search traffic on a monthly basis, the ads you have tied to that keyword may be ineligible to show. Once Google notices that you’re targeting an extremely low-volume keyword, it’ll make it temporarily inactive within your account. If search volume picks up to a reasonable level, Google will automatically reactive the keyword.

Tactically, however, simply waiting around for volume to increase isn’t exactly a good idea. Using Google’s Keyword Planner, (which comes with your Google Ads account) you should try your best to find a similar keyword with substantial volume.

4. Negative keywords are negating active keywords

Negative keywords—which enable you to keep your ads from matching to irrelevant queries—can be set at the ad group level and the campaign level. If some of your Google ads aren’t showing, it may be because you have negative keywords canceling out active keywords.

As an example, let’s say you’re bidding on the phrase match keyword “CRM free trial” and you’ve set free CRM as a campaign-level broad match negative. In this case, the negative keyword would override the active keyword. To fix this, you’d simply need to switch from the broad match negative free CRM to the exact match negative [free CRM]. Doing so would allow you to advertise to users looking for a free trial of a CRM while simultaneously withholding your ads from users looking for a CRM that doesn’t cost anything.

5. Your negative bid adjustments are too large

Before we move onto performance-related issues that can keep your Google ads from showing, we’ve got one last scenario to cover: The negative bid adjustments you’ve set are so large that they’re tanking your ad rank.

Negative bid adjustments—which allow you to automatically decrease your bids within a particular campaign under specific circumstances—can be set on a number of different parameters: device type, time of day, location, and so on. As effective as this capability can be, if the negative bid adjustments you’re setting are too extreme, it’s entirely possible that you’re knocking yourself out of the ad competition.

Realizing that your Google ads aren’t showing can be a scary and confusing moment for a digital marketer or a business owner. It’s all too easy to start panicking and let your mind go in a million different directions.

As much as we can relate to that, it’s important to recognize that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why your Google ads aren’t showing. Whether the issue is performance-based or not, there’s always something you can do to right the ship and get your ads in front of your prospects once again.

If you need help, feel free to contact us today!