There are approximately 12 billion searches on Google each month. Advertising on Google is an exciting time for any business and you may be curious as to what your ads look like or if they are actually showing. It is important to remember that Google is smart; they have a complex algorithm that they use to pull results for users. Even though the algorithm is unknown to the public, we do know that Google wants to provide the best user experience possible and was developed to show the most relevant content to the user.
Even though you may want to see your advertisements in the search engine results page (SERP), it is critical not to Google your own advertisements. You may think that you are in the clear because you are not clicking your ads as it costs you money, but just by seeing your own ads continuously can damage your campaign. Here are six reasons why you shouldn’t Google your own ads.
Google allows advertisers to be very specific with its targeting to reach your ideal consumer. This includes location and time of day scheduling. If you are searching your ads, you may not be the ideal consumer that Google is looking for, so you will not see your ads. You could be outside of the geographic radius or it could be during a time that was set up not to show your ads. This type of targeting is set up strategically to get the most out of your campaign and reach your target audience.
The AdWords auction is set up to allow for all sizes of budgets to compete against each other. The amount you’re bidding is only one factor in the Google algorithm for your ad position placement. You may have the most relevant content for the users, but with a smaller budget.
When your budget is limited, it means that your campaign does not have media budget for the amount of searches and competition for your campaign. Google wants to spread your budget throughout the entire day to reach a range of audiences during your targeted time of day. If you are Googling your own ads, especially when your campaign is limited by budget, they may not be showing at the time of the search because of this reason.
When users search for particular keywords and they don’t click on an ad, it tells Google that the ad is not relevant to them. The lower the relevancy, the lower the quality score that particular keyword will have, which will lower your placement in the SERP. This will decrease the likelihood of your ad showing in some of the top positions and as a result, your ad is less likely to be clicked.
The only way to potentially increase your placement would be by bidding higher. The lower your quality score, the higher your cost per click (CPC) will be, which results in an increase in spend. Worse yet, if your quality score continues to decrease, Google will shut off your ads.
Your click through rate (CTR) is data that represents the likelihood that users will click on your ad. This is calculated from your clicks and impressions (the amount of users that see your ads). The more impressions with fewer amounts of clicks will decrease your click through rate. If you are Googling your ads and not clicking, you will be skewing your click through rate by adding more impressions with no clicks.
Advertisers use this data when monitoring the health of your campaign and use the CTR when making critical decisions on pausing or removing certain keywords or ads. If the data is skewed, we may remove keywords or AdWords that may look like they are under performing with a low CTR, but really this is not the case.
Google tracks users through cookies on their computer with their IP address. Google sees each user as an IP address and when that particular user does not click on the ad it tells Google that the ad is not of interest to them. If this keeps occurring, Google will eventually stop showing your ads for that particular IP address. Even though they are not showing for you, your ads may still be showing for other users.
This is a recent issue that we have experienced first hand. Google wants you to click the ads, as it is revenue for them. We mentioned that they will stop showing your ads, but before they do that they may take it upon themselves to create their own ad variation based on their data.
One client of ours was searching for their ads continuously and eventually their ads had two location extensions showing, one was theirs and another was a different franchisee in the same city. It was not something that we set up in the campaign; it was Google creating their version to try to entice the user to click their ads. Google thought that the user might be interested in the other location and click into the ad. We learned from Google support that they will take it upon themselves to create different ad variations to entice a user who is continuously searching for the same word and not clicking.
For these reasons, it is important to understand and to inform all of your employees not to search for your Google ads. This will protect the health of your AdWords campaign.
If you have any questions about your AdWords campaign, please reach out to your Account Manager. Here at tbk Creative we are happy to answer any questions and provide reports on your campaign. If you are interested in setting up an AdWords campaign, contact us today!