Your Google Ads not showing when you search your keywords? You’ve built and activated your Google Ads campaign, but now you don’t see your ads. 7 out of 10 Google Ads managers complained about it at least once.
While unnerving, this issue is common for many Google Ads account owners. In fact, there are several reasons why you might not see your own Google Ad when searching for your keywords.
The main reason is repeated searches. The more you search for your own keywords without clicking on ads, the less likely Google is to show you those ads in the future. Google thinks you are not a “great” client for your business and ads. So at some point, Google will stop showing your ads to you.
Google purposely does not show ads to people it finds very unlikely to convert – and you are unlikely to convert on your own product. Try searching in incognito mode. Sometimes this resolves the issue and you can see your own Google Search Ads. You’ll find that the more you search without interacting with an ad, the more Google will assume you’re not interested.
Alternatively, you can rely on data in your Google Ads. Do you see impressions and clicks on those keywords? If not, then there might be an issue with the Google Ad copy being disapproved and not serving, or you might be out of your location range to where the ad is set to show.
Key Takeaways
- Repeated searches of your own ads without clicking can cause Google to stop showing your ads to you. Google assumes you are unlikely to convert, and it hides your Google Ads from you to avoid wasting impressions and your Google Ads budget.
- Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool instead of manually searching for your ads. This tool helps you understand why your ads may not be appearing and prevents you from negatively impacting your impressions and click-through rates.
- Check your Google Ads account directly if issues persist. The diagnosis tool might not reveal all potential problems, so it’s crucial to log in and investigate metrics like impression share, ad quality, and bidding strategies.
- Your ads might not show due to low search volume for the target keywords. Google can deactivate keywords that do not generate enough searches, so it’s essential to choose keywords with sufficient search volume.
- Negative bid adjustments and overly restrictive ad scheduling or targeting can prevent your ads from reaching their audience. Overusing these features can result in your ads not showing for particular keywords.
- Ensure your ad groups are focused and contain tightly related keywords. Google ranks ads based on relevance, so mixing unrelated keywords in the same ad group can lower engagement and ad rank.
- Payment failures or outdated payment details can cause your ads to stop showing. Always verify that your payment information is up-to-date to avoid interruptions in your ad campaigns.
This article from New Digital will walk you through all the possible scenarios that could cause your Google Ads not to show. Let’s dig in.
The First Thing You Should Do If Your Google Ads Aren’t Showing
With Google Ads, there’s often a lot more going on “under the hood” than you might have initially thought. So before you get worried, sit down and follow our steps to ensure that everything is working properly.
Check the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool
Manually searching for your ads probably hinders things more than it helps. If you want to get a handle on what’s going on, you should use Google’s Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool. Using the ad preview tool shows you whether your ad is still eligible and how it appears in search results based on factors like device and location.
The tool will give you basic information about structural reasons why your ads aren’t showing, for instance:
- Google disapproved your ad
- You’ve exceeded your budget
- You’re not bidding high enough
Why use this instead of Google search? Well, when you constantly search for your ads (and click on them) it impacts your impressions and click-through rates. In fact, Google might perceive this as manipulation and hide your ad.
Check Your Google Ads Account
Now, the diagnostics tool is useful, but it’s hardly perfect. It doesn’t show you real-time data. Moreover, it won’t show you the complete picture when it comes to diagnosing issues either. Some issues could be more complex.
That’s why you need to log into your Google Ads account and dig into what’s going on. Especially if the diagnostics tool doesn’t return anything.
Check Impression Share
So, one sign that your budget is too low, or that your ads are of low quality, is that your ads are only appearing maybe 10 or 20% of the time. Impression share will tell you how often users who search for your target keywords are seeing your ads.
Adjust your Bidding
If you have a low ad rank, it could also mean that you’re not bidding enough. There’s an option called “Raise bids to appear on First Page” that you can use to bid just enough to get to the first page. That said, Google can get a little carried away with this and you could lose a lot of money. Be warned.
Do Your Target Keywords Have Enough Search Volume?
In general, you should be picking keywords with enough search volume so that it’s worth it. Otherwise, Google can deactivate those keywords. Check to make sure this is not the case.
Google might temporarily deactivate keywords with very low search volume. Have a look at the status of your keywords and consider finding higher-search-volume alternatives.
Make Sure Your Ad Groups are Focused
Don’t just target keywords willy-nilly. You need to have ad groups with keywords that are all relevant to each other. Google is checking for relevance when it decides which ads to rank.
Have a Look At Your Quality Score
Similarly, you should maintain a high-quality score if you want your bids to succeed. It’s all part of the equation. To improve your quality score you can:
- Confirm that your ads are relevant
- Make your landing page experience enjoyable
7 Other Reasons Why Your Google Ads Might Not Show Up
If what we discussed above doesn’t help you get to the root of the issue, you’ll have to dig even deeper.
In fact, you may be following Google Ads best practices to the letter. And yet, there are still multiple things that make your ads vanish from Google. What we mean is that your issues aren’t related to performance or ad quality.
Let’s run through the other more arbitrary causes of your ads’ downfall.
1. Your Payment Failed
“Doh!” It’s kind of a Homer Simpson moment. If you’re like most people, you’ve set your Ads account up for automatic payments. In such cases, it’s easy for you to butt up against your maximum payment threshold. You might need to go in and raise it manually in this case.
On the other hand. your payment details might have expired and Google is charging an old credit card. Go into your account and update it if that’s the case.
2. Your Didn’t Pursue an Appropriate Bidding Strategy
Make sure that you’ve paid close attention to your bid strategy. This is where having an experienced professional can help you a lot. You need to set a daily budget for each campaign, but if your maximum CPC for a particular keyword is greater than your budget for a campaign, then your ads will just stop showing up.
So to fix this, go to the Keywords tab in your campaign settings and use the bid simulators. Basically, this tool allows you to manipulate your bid so that you can evaluate the impact of different prices on your ad performance.
One note to keep in mind is that your Quality Score also influences this by a lot, but it will take a lot of effort to improve it. For instance, you might need to rewrite your ad copy.
3. The Search Volume For Your Keywords Is Too Low
It can be interesting to target long-tail keywords, but sometimes, you really need to confirm that there are actually people searching for your keywords. If you have a campaign that targets such keywords, Google could deactivate your ads for them. So a low search volume could give you headaches.
That said, if the keyword ever sees a boost in volume, Google will once again add it to your ad back to the mix. But waiting for this to happen is extremely passive and not at all a winning strategy. Google Keyword Planner has plenty of interesting keywords for you to target if you want to get ahead. And once again, working with a pro will help you find high-volume keywords that your buyers actually search for.
4. Your Ads Were Paused, Deleted, or Disapproved
Sometimes, you see issues with your ad status that reflect some arbitrary change to your campaigns. These three cases are when your ads are paused, deleted, or rejected.
If your ad groups have been paused, the fix is simple. All you need to do is switch their status from paused to enabled.
Now, sometimes something goes wrong and your ad groups or campaigns get deleted. Unfortunately, you will need to build your campaigns from scratch, the data is lost forever.
In any case, you can look at your Change History to see when the deletion happened. There, you’ll see a log of every change made to your campaign, including with respect to deletion status. In case someone is trespassing on your system, this will also help you find the culprit.
From time to time, your ad could also have been disapproved rather than paused or deleted. If this happens, you just need to follow Google’s instructions and ad policies to make sure that your ad gets approved.
5. You Did A Bad Job Timing (and Locating) Your Google Ads Campaigns
Part of your Google Ads campaign strategy is to create an advertising schedule that reaches your buyers when they’re online and ready to buy. For instance, you might be a law firm looking to drive more phone calls to your office using Google Ads. Since your office likely isn’t open for calls at 4 am, then it would make no sense to keep your ads active during that period. That’s a good example of ad scheduling.
However, there is such a thing as being too restrictive. Check the Ad Schedule tab in your Google Ads account to see if you’re being too restrictive. This is the same issue as with the keyword search volume being too low. It could be that for the specific times and locations you picked, the search volume is too low and your ads got deactivated.
It’s also possible that you adjusted the timing or location of your campaigns to test to see how your audience reacts. That’s a common rookie move. Instead of using Targeting to test different locations or times of day, use Observation. Using this feature, you’ll be able to reach an audience beyond a select ad group. Not to mention, you’ll avoid the search traffic issue.
6. Do You Have Overlapping Negative Keywords?
There are two instances where you can set negative keywords. The first is at the campaign level, meaning that none of your Google Ads will show for that specific Google Ads campaign. The second instance is at the ad group level meaning that for a particular set of keywords and ad copy, you don’t want your ads to show for the negative keywords you set.
Inexperienced Google Ads managers often confuse the two. But it’s an important distinction. If you set negative keywords at the campaign level and then target them in a specific ad group, you won’t have your ads show up for that keyword.
With broad match and phrase match, this can get a little tricky.
Let’s say you set a phrase match keyword for “HR software free trial”. However, at the global campaign level, you’ve set “Free HR software” as a broad match negative keyword. Because the negative keyword is a broad match and at the campaign level, this overrides all your other instructions. Your ads won’t show up for the keyword “HR software free trial”. The easiest fix here is to change the “Free HR software” negative keyword from broad match to exact match negative. That way, your ads will start showing again for “HR software free trial.”
7. Negative Bid Adjustments Exceed Recommended Thresholds
Negative bid adjustments are quite useful because they permit you to decrease bids based on factors such as:
- Device type
- Time of day
- Location
- Other factors
You can save quite a bit of money on the ad auction this way.
However, like with the timing targeting we mentioned earlier, it’s easy to abuse this feature. An excess of such bid adjustments could result in a scenario where your ads don’t reach anyone at all for particular keywords. You could be unconsciously excluding your ads from bid auctions and decreasing your rank.
Google Ads Not Showing: Potential Performance Issues
It’s no secret, there are a lot of different ways to optimize your ad campaigns.
But as the previous sections show, it’s easy to mistakes. You could be leading yourself down a bad path if you’re not careful.
Thankfully we’ve come up with 4 common performance issues that could be causing your ads not to show up.
8. Your Ad Groups Need Tighter Keyword Cohesion
The logic behind an ad group is simple: you select a range of keywords that relate to each other and write ads for them. The whole point is that Google will group them together as it assumes that these are closely-related keywords.
However, you may pick a bunch of keywords that are not related while still keeping the same ad for them. This will deceive the searcher’s expectation and cause engagement to go down, particularly for those keywords.
So go through your ad groups and double-check that all the keywords are related to each other. Furthermore, make sure that your ads are relevant to these keywords too.
How to Set Up Ad Groups Properly
Let’s go through an example of a poorly targeted ad group and a well-targeted one.
Say you run an e-commerce shoe store. Here are some examples of bad ad groups:
Mixed Keywords
- Examples: “running shoes,” “basketball shoes,” “cheap shoes,” “shoe stores”
Keywords That Are Too Broad
- Examples: “best shoes,” “comfortable sneakers,” “buy shoes online,” “sandals”
Unfocused Keywords
- Examples: “shoes for kids,” “men’s athletic shoes,” “women’s formal shoes,” “shoe repair”
As you can see, everything is unfocused. For instance, “shoes for kids” and “men’s athletic shoes” really don’t belong in the same group. How can you make an offer to both target audiences accurately? Your ad copy would need to be different.
Instead, you should run ad group keywords like these:
Ad Group 1: Running Shoes
- Keywords: “best running shoes,” “comfortable running shoes,” “running shoes for men,” “running shoes for women”
Ad Group 2: Basketball Shoes
- Keywords: “best basketball shoes,” “comfortable basketball shoes,” “basketball shoes for men,” “basketball shoes for women”
Ad Group 3: Affordable Shoes
- Keywords: “cheap running shoes,” “affordable basketball shoes,” “discount athletic shoes,” “budget-friendly sneakers”
Here, you have a clear offer and positioning for your shoes. You can run ad copy that targets affordability or basketball, rather than mixing them together.
9. You Failed to Optimize Your Copy Correctly
Anybody can pick keywords, but it takes a quality writer to create effective ad copy.
First things first – try to incorporate your target keywords in your ad copy as much as possible. Even though it won’t be an exact match every time. including 2 or 3 words can go a long way to increasing your users’ perception of relevance. Not to mention, Google will see that it’s relevant too. Keep in mind that you should have more keywords than ads. You simply don’t have the time to create an ad specific to each keyword.
10. Your Landing Pages Lack Relevance
Truth be told, ad copy is only the first battle you have to win. Once the user clicks on your ad, you need to have a landing page that correctly addresses their concerns. Otherwise, they’ll just navigate away.
And if they bounce from your page, that means your Quality Score goes down! Google wants you to make engaging ads.
How to Check for Relevance
If you’ve written ad copy and don’t know whether it’s relevant, you need to take a step back.
You should find relevance at the beginning of the writing process. This is when you conduct in-depth customer research to determine what your ICP (ideal customer persona) typically needs. Talk to your customers directly and ask them what sorts of problems they’re having. You’ll likely get a better outcome with this method.
11. You Have a Poor Click-through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) measures what percentage of people who see your ad actually click. And it’s no secret that a high CTR requires you to make a strong first impression. This first impression will also affect your ad rank.
To get people to click on your ads, you need to give them a reason to stop scrolling.
This goes back to the ad copy. It’s not enough to include keywords in your ads, you need to start forming a narrative the moment your reader lays eyes on the headline.
Make the choice easy for them. Does your ad make your target audience desperate to learn more? Or does it bore them with the same type of drivel they’re used to seeing?
How to Write Copy That Converts
Again, you need to put your customer first.
The main concern here is grabbing your target audience’s attention and then building up their interest. One of the easiest ways to do that is to play on their fears.
Don’t take this the wrong way, you shouldn’t use deceiving practices in your ads…
But on the other hand. playing to base fears and desires can work well here if you pull it off effectively.
Not sure what kind of copy converts? Split test everything. Figure out which pain points resonate the most with your audience and see how they stack up against each other.
You should also be cognizant of what stage your buyers are at in your sales funnel. In the beginning, you need to mostly focus on answering general questions. But later on, you should be pushing them harder towards your product.
Your Next Steps
While it’s not unusual to meet this sort of challenge with panic, you’ll find that the reasons behind why your Google Ads aren’t showing up are fairly simple.
Instead of wasting hours trying to find the source, this is a job to outsource to the pros. After all, as Google ads experts with over a decade of experience, we can get to the bottom of your Google Ads problems quickly. By the end, you’ll get Google Ads optimization suitable to your industry, as well as a lot of time saved on your end.
It’s time to let us focus on your Google Ads so that you can focus on delivering your services. The whole point of running ads is to scale, so why not get a head start with us at New Digital?
