4 Reasons Why Your Paid Search Ads Aren’t Showing Up
Paid search ads are an essential part of a locally owned business’s marketing plan. These specially designed ads are imperative if you want to show up at the top of the search results page. Paid search ads, the engines they live in, and the responsibility of maintaining and optimizing these ads can be a complex and intricate task.
Here at ChoiceLocal, every partner that signs on for paid search has their own PPC Specialist who monitors their paid search campaigns and makes sure they are getting the most out of their program.
You decide to check in on your ads and google your business name, but your ad is not showing up. Don’t panic! There are several reasons as to why you are not seeing your ad:
Reason I: Location
For many businesses, you provide your services to a set of zip codes in your territory. These zip codes are applied to your campaign so only people in your target locations are being shown the ad. If you (more specifically, your IP address) are not within any of the target zip codes, you will not be shown the ad.
Reason II: Your Ads Are Under Review
When a Google Ads campaign goes live, all ads are put into an “Under Review” stage. Google reviews all ads, their content, their targeting, etc. to make sure that they adhere to Google’s ad policies. In some cases, the ads become disapproved. Some things that can trigger an ad to be disapproved are:
- Spelling
- Capitalization
- Unacceptable spacing
- Excessive punctuation
- Trademark or copyright infringement issues
- Landing page destination mismatch
Your PPC Specialist will ensure that none of these triggers are in the campaign before it goes live. They will also fix any issues if they become disapproved.
Reason III: Budget
Your PPC Specialist knows that there was an agreed-upon monthly budget for your paid search campaign. We monitor your campaign each month and adjust the budget where we see fit. If your campaign is going through your budget quickly or has run out of money for the month, we will pause the campaigns to ensure you do not go over your budget. This will cause your ads to not show for a short period of time as the campaign will be paused until the first of the next month!
Reason IV: Bidding
Within a paid search campaign, there are a lot of keywords that we bid on. In some cases, your ad is not showing because the bid on the keyword searched is not high enough. This means that either there are competitors bidding higher on those keywords than us or that the bid is not high enough in the first place. This is where your PPC Specialist would go into the account and increase the bids on those keywords to make the chances of your ads showing even higher.
Although you might not be seeing your ad in the search results, the most important part of a paid search campaign is the outcome and how we can improve your business. At ChoiceLocal we will always be transparent with our partners and work on how we can improve your paid search campaigns and other marketing efforts.
About the Author
Natalie Medaglia is a paid search specialist at ChoiceLocal. When she is not analyzing and optimizing ad campaigns, she enjoys hiking, yoga, cooking, and binging reality TV.
