I see this happen ALL the time. Our clients are curious to see their PPC (pay-per-click) ads in action so they go to Google, type in one of their keywords and voila! – the ad shows.
Next week, the same thing happens – the same keyword is entered just to be sure the ad is still showing and to determine which position the ad is in.
Here are the problems:
1. Each time a user searches for something in Google, this term and the ads that come up are tracked. If the ads are never clicked (because why would you click on your own ad when you are searching for it?) Google thinks the ads they are showing are not relevant and will stop showing those ads. So now all of a sudden it looks like we are not doing our jobs and have let the ads slip off the radar. This is in fact not the case. Google has just optimized the paid search results in order to serve each user better.
2. Each time an ad appears and is not clicked, this is tracked as an impression. The more impressions an ad has, the more clicks it should have, in theory. But if a user is always checking to see if their ad is there and never clicking on it, the number of impressions increases. This brings the CTR (click-through-rate) down, which brings the Quality Score down, which drives the CPC up!
Of course, there is a solution.
Google has developed a brilliant tool call the Adwords Ad Preview Tool. What this does is it brings up a site which mimics Google search results but does NOT affect the PPC campaigns. A user can now search any or all of the keywords and see EXACTLY what they would see if they were typing the words directly into Google.
The nice thing about this tool is that the PPC campaigns are not affected and also, specific regions can be selected. If I have a client in the US and the PPC ads are targeted at California only, if I go to Google.com and type in one of their search terms, I will never see the ads because I am in Calgary. With the Ads Preview tool, I can select a target region and see the ads that appear for that area. Very neat!
Keep in mind that the solution is NOT to click on the ad to avoid impressions increasing without clicks increasing. This would then only drive up your costs. You know what your website looks like so you don’t need to click on a paid ad to get there.
So next time you want to see if your ads are showing, make sure you use the Adwords Ad Preview Tool. In the long run, it will help your PPC campaign!
As always, if you would like to set up a PPC campaign and need help or would like us to do it for you, please contact us at Anduro Marketing!