subject: Why Isn't My Advert Showing In Google Adwords? [print this page] This is one of the most commonly asked questions by new advertisers.
So here's a list of potential reasons it might not be showing:
1.Your account is new, and you have not entered payment details. When you have entered payment details, they take a short while to be authorised. This can be up to a day or two.
2.You have set up a new campaign with new ad groups and keywords, that need to be reviewed. This can take a short while.
3.Your daily budget has run out. Even though it might not appear to have run out, Google AdWords sometimes takes a short while (around half an hour) to catch up with very busy markets.
4.You are in a different geographical area than the area your adverts are set to run in. If you have set your adverts to run in England, and you're in Wales - you will not be able to see them! Likewise if you have used geographical targeting to target specific cities, if you are not in the city in question you will not be able to see the adverts.
5.Your Campaign Settings are set to divide the budget up throughout the day. This is known as Delivery Method. This means your campaign is under-funded and Google chooses to show the adverts during part of the day only to avoid the budget expiring too soon.
6.You have scheduled your adverts to run at certain times of day only - and you are not searching within those hours.
7.You have chosen Position Preferences that cannot be accommodated at the moment. For example if you have chosen Position Preference 1 to 3, and your bid is not high enough, the advert will not show at all, as it cannot be shown in your preferred position.
8.Your Quality Score is too low, and your bid too low to result in the advert showing. If your QS is low, this is likely to be due to poor advert/keyword matching along with a poor quality landing page. You need to increase your QS (you will likely need the services of an AdWords Specialist) and increase the bid prices in the short term until QS improves.
9.You have entered negative keywords that conflict with the keywords you have chosen. For example, if you have a negative keyword of free and a keyword phrase in your campaign of "free AdWords ebook", your advert will not show.
Having said all this, you should NOT actually be searching Google to view your ads, as this drives impressions up and Click Through rate down. Instead, use the Ad Preview Tool in Google.
