This is for those of you who have Google Adwords PPC campaigns. Of course, you know I believe if you are trying to market your site, you should be using Google Adwords.
Do you search Google for the keywords you bid on to monitor your ad positions? If so, think about this. Anytime you or your co-workers search a keyword associated with your ad, that ad accrues an impression. Over time, this may decrease your CTR (as the number of impressions increases but the clicks do not) and, in turn, may lead to a lower Quality Score. That, in turn, means you may begin to see your ad in a lower position than before.
Did you know that Google offers a way to check for your ads that won’t negatively impact your campaigns? It’s called the Ad Preview page and it enables you to view ads (and search results) as they would appear on a regular Google search results page to most users, without accruing extra impressions for your ad.
The Ad Preview page isn’t the prettiest tool Google offers, but if you have been searching for your own search terms, it is a tool you should use. Over time, it will save you money.
2 comments ↓
Two questions on Ad Preview. First, where is it located on the Google Adwords site? Second, when I used the link in your blog and tried the ad preview it didn’t seem to work for ads that are geographically limited. Am I doing something wrong or does Ad Preview only look at national results?
The easiest way to find this, or other Google tools, is to simply search for it. Of course, that only works well if you know the name of the tool. In this case, it is the Google Adwords Preview Tool. Or, you can memorize this URL.
http://www.google.com/adpreview (no trailing slash) which redirects to a much longer URL.
On the right-side of the Adwords Preview Tool there is a box where you may specify, country, states, cities or regions. You should be able to find your ads there. Also, you can refine the results page by adding location attributes and values manually to the URL of the ad preview page. For example, if you are trying to preview ads for “real estate” in Chicago, IL, the URL you would use would look like:
http://www.google.com/search?adtest=on&hl=en&q=real+estate&gr=US-IL&gcs=Chicago
The basic parameters are &gl= for Country, &gr= for Region, &cs= for City.
Good luck!
- John
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