In the world of online advertising, driving quality traffic to your website is essential for the success of your business. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has become a popular method to attract targeted visitors and generate revenue. Once your ads are up and running, it is all too tempting to start searching for them to see how they look.
We get it, you’re spending money on something and you want to make sure it looks good and it will start repaying the spend & earning you some business. However, there are a number of reasons why searching for your own Google Ads can have a negative impact on your campaign. We are going to dive into why this is never a good idea.
- Potential Costs
The first reason, and possibly most important to a business owner, is a waste of budget. Google Ads are Pay Per Click (PPC), so you are paying for every click that your ad gets. Depending on the industry you are advertising in, Cost Per Click (CPC) can be quite expensive. We see cost per click ranging anywhere from $1 to $80. Now let’s just take a CPC of $10, as an example. Every time you search your ad and click it, whether it’s an accident or not, you’re paying $10. It will be unfortunate enough that you had to pay for it, but you have also taken $10 of your budget that could have been used on a potential lead.
- Click Through Rate
Click through rate is an important metric when measuring the success of your Google Ads. This is calculated by dividing the amount of clicks your ad received by the number of times that it was seen.
If you are searching for your ad frequently and not clicking it, then your click through rate is going to go down. While that might not seem that big, it matters to us when managing the account, as we need to try and figure out why the ad is being seen but isn’t being clicked.
- Quality Score
There are multiple metrics that are used by Google to measure your keyword quality score including ad relevance, landing page experience and click through rate. If you start searching your keywords in an attempt to see your ad and you don’t click it, that keywords quality score will go down.
With a low quality score, Google will show your ad less for that keyword. If you search for multiple keywords to see what will bring your ad up, then it will keep on showing less and less. It might also stop showing on page one, and start showing lower down the results pages as the quality score drops.
Bounce rate on your website will also affect your quality score. So if you search for your ads and end up clicking them, you are more than likely leaving the page straight away. Google will record that bounce rate and reduce the quality score of the ad.
It is important to keep this quality score as high as possible as it impacts the overall efficiency of your PPC campaigns in terms of results, but also your return on investment.
- Ad Relevance
The more times that you see your ad copy and don’t click it, Google’s algorithm is going to start thinking that the search term you used is irrelevant and it won’t show your ad to potential customers who use the same search terms, or it might just stop showing your ads altogether. It is important to let Google’s algorithm work everything out on its own so that your ad will start naturally showing for really strong search terms that have more of a chance to convert.
Feel like your ads aren’t showing?
If your ads are running and you feel like they aren’t showing up, don’t worry; we can see every search term that triggers your ad to show. If it really isn’t showing, we know very quickly and we make the necessary adjustments to ensure it starts getting impressions. Once we start your Google Ad campaign, you can trust that we are getting your ad shown in the right place at the right time.
How to See Your Ad Without Issues
We understand that you will want to see the ad. It makes sense! You’re paying for it, you want to see how they show. Just go to Campaign > Ads & Assets > Ads and click the pencil icon beside the ad you want to view. This will cycle through all of the mobile and PC ad previews and there will be no harm caused.
If you are under our PPC management program, just send us an email and ask to see your ad. We will be able to screenshot them and send them right over to you.
