It’s natural for advertisers to feel curious about how their Google Ads look in search results. After all, you’ve likely spent time and money crafting the perfect ad copy and selecting your target keywords. However, typing in your ad keywords to see if they appear is not only ineffective but could also lead to unintended consequences.
Understanding Google’s Ad System
In order to know why searching for your own ads is not a good option, it is better to learn how Google works. Google Ads is an auction system where the advertisers bid for keywords. The highest bidder may not get their ad on search results. Your ad on search results is decided by a mix of your bid, ad quality, and another factor called Quality Score.
Quality Score evaluates the relevance and quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. If Google detects high-quality elements in your ad campaign, you’re more likely to gain better placements at lower costs. The system also uses cookies, location data, and user behavior to show ads to the most relevant searchers. This means not every keyword search will yield the same ads for every person.
The Impacts of Googling Your Own Advertisements
Google your ads at your heart’s content, but do be aware, it’ll continue to carry unintended consequences. When you Google your words and notice your advertisement (not even clicking through on it), there’s an impression each time tabulated in your campaign report. All the repeating inflation of those impressions without like matching clicks skews your click-through rate downward over time, artificially. Low CTR is a red flag for Google that your advertisement is not so relevant, and this will bring down your Quality Score and hamper ad performance.
If you’re clicking through your ads repetitively, not just are you losing your own advertisement funds, but also giving Google algorithms false signals. Repeated clicks without any activity of conversion will mislead the system and result in misreading your campaign performance.
Why You Shouldn’t Check Out Your Ads
Aside from the potential for biased data, looking at your own ads isn’t necessarily showing you much real data about how they’re really performing. You might be viewing an ad being shown differently by geography, by search history, or by device. You might be causing your ad not to show when it’s actually being viewed by your target audience. This unreliability can have the potential to create unnecessary fear or anxiety and require a change in the campaign when otherwise the campaign does not require a change.
Other Ways to Monitor Your Ads
Instead of attempting to locate your ads manually, utilize the tools designed to provide you with precise performance data. Google Ads also has a robust reporting and analysis tool through which you can observe how your ads really perform. Impressions, clicks, and conversions all give an absolute measure of the efficacy of your campaign.
You can also utilize Google’s Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool with the help of King Kong. With this tool, you can see how your ad would appear in search results without changing impressions or CTR. It is an easy way of ad display and position testing without distorting your performance data.
Searching for your own Google Ads might feel tempting, but as we’ve seen, this approach does more harm than good. Instead, leverage the robust tools provided by Google Ads to monitor and optimize your campaigns effectively. By doing so, you’ll avoid skewing your metrics and ensure your ads perform at their highest potential.
Maintain a wise understanding of your campaign—shatter the pattern of looking for your own ads and stick to using proven methods of measuring your success.
