In the AdWords Help Forum I always read posts from advertisers saying that they “can not see their ads” when looking on Google.com. It seems there are plenty of people interested in seeing their ads in action, some downright obsessed. I am surprised how many advertisers do not know about the Ad Preview Tool.
Locating the Ad Preview Tool in your AdWords Account
Google designed the Ad Preview Tool especially for AdWords advertisers. The tool is helpful for:
1. Advertisers targeting a location outside of their own location.
2. Advertisers targeting specific languages other than their own computer language setup.
3. Viewing your live ads (without causing impressions on your account and lowering your CTR!)
The Google AdWords Preview Tool
So, don’t lower your own CTR. It is too large of a component of quality score. CTR data is used to calculate over 1/2 of your overall Quality score. CTR is what Google uses to gauge the interaction of your keywords and ad text with the public.
Is there stats that can tell us what percentage of searches are advertisers / clients looking for their own ads.
I know that most of our clients are continuously looking to see were their ads are compared to their competitors.
Not directly, that I’m aware of. However, if Google do identify this as a category, it should be part of the “invalid” activity reports. Google clearly identify impressions as invalid in a separate activity from identifying clicks as invalid (you can have 0 impressions and 1 clicks, if the impression is counted as invalid).
Here is a quick question:
Will the preview tool work if you have not yet entered your billing information?
I want to test my ad before giving the billing info, but my ad does not appear at all in the preview tool.
Any help? Thanks in advance.
VinkoCM,
I believe that the preview tool will only work on live ads.