Looking up one's own Google AdWords Ads

Imagine you run Google AdWords ads, either yourself or through a Search Engine Marketing Agency and you want to check if your ads appear...

1. Scenario.
This is what happens in 99% of the cases. You want to check if your ads are showing and if they are high in the rankings so you search a keyword you know is in your keyword list. Your ad appears and you are happy...
what happens in the background though is:
Your ad gets impressions but no clicks. This lowers the CTR (Click through rate) artificially, which in turn lowers the Quality Score (QS). A lower Quality Score will result in higher av. CPCs (Cost per Click). In other words you make your own ads more expensive ! And in the worst case Google might stop showing your ad totally as the system might think "a lot of impressions but no clicks = irrelevant ad".

2. Scenario
You search your keyword, see your ad and you click the ad. This is different, you pay for the click but it may increase the Quality Score. If you do it too often it will count as click spam though..

So, the correct way is:
If you want to check if your Google AdWords ads are showing, do not perform a live search, use the Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool.


This Google tool simulates the search, you see exactly what you would see in a live search but it does not affect the Quality Score in any way. Another advantage is that you can simulate being in different countries.
Further recommendations are:
Setup IP filters in the Google Adwords system (Settings) for your office IPs and even e.g. supplier companies' IPs.

Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool

CTR goals, the higher the better?

Let's say you are running a PPC campaign on Google AdWords and you are wondering what CTR is good...

Google AdWords Account-Campaign Level Screenshot 

What is a CTR?
The Click-Through-Rate (CTR) shows what percentage of the people who see your ad actually click on it.
The CTR is an average and can be found on different levels, Account level, Campaign level, Adgroup level and Keyword level. It is a good indicator of how relevant your ads are to your keyword.

Why should I optimise my Google AdWords Campaigns for CTR?
The CTR is an important factor in the Google Quality Score. Google rewards relevant ads by giving them a higher Quality Score. A higher Quality Score might mean that you pay less per click for your ads, or alternatively your ads get a higher ranking for the same cost per click.

Search CTR vs Display CTR
First of all one should distinguish between GDN (Google Display Network-formerly called Google Content Network), and Search. In Google a Search CTR of about 2% and above is regarded as good and for the GDN, 0.10% is regarded as normal. Anything less than these values should be investigated further.

Brand CTR vs Generic CTR
It is also important to distinguish between brand terms (e.g. Adidas) and generic terms (e.g. runners). A brand campaign might have typically 20%-30% CTR. Non-Brand campaigns (Generic) should have 2% at least as stated above. And by the way, if you haven't separated brand vs generic keywords into different campaigns then please do. It is not easy to assess and manage a mixed campaign.

CTR and Traffic
When I was working in Google, one inexperienced industry sales manager said: "I don't regard any CTR less than 4% successful!"
Hmm, ok... let's analyse this further.
Through optimisations you can influence the CTR. The CTR is in negative correlation with traffic. Below you see a very simple graph showing this correlation.

The more specific you become, the higher the CTR, but you will sacrifice traffic on the other hand.
Well, through optimisations you could even achieve an average CTR of 15% on generic terms, but traffic would suffer. So it is not advisable to set rigid CTR goals. Striving for a too high CTR is not advisable.