Google Pay Per Click and Checking to see your own listings - The Right Way to do it

Many many people run PPC campaigns, and many of them just can't resist typing in their keywords to see if their advert appears...

Now whilst I can see why people the do this, doing it that way is a bad idea for two very important reasons:-

It's the Wrong Way Because

Firstly, by getting their ad to appear and not clicking on it, they will reduce the apparent effectiveness of the advert as Google measures something called Click Through Rate CTR%.. This basically calculates the number of times an ad is seen to the number of times it is clicked. The higher the CTR%, the lower Google charge for the click (it all being to do with Google's Quality Score Algorithim).

So, if you dilute the CTR by constant cheking, you will be driving your own click costs up. Admitedly, you'll be doing the same for your competitors, but here the only winner is Google, and they have enough money already.

The second reason is a strange one, as Google tell me that if a particular user keeps keying in the same phrases, somehow and they couldn't / wouldn't, tell me how, they start providing totally different results on the screen to a "normal" searcher. In practice this means that a user may well not see the very ad they were looking for, when another person would, which in turn means that checking that way is pretty much useless.

Strange as all this seems this appears to be the case with at least one of my customers.

By the way, the mysterious system to which Google mention could be the Google tool bar, as this will "personalise" the results you see, and will thus show you different results than others..

And the Right Way is..

It's all very simple, just go to The Google Ad Preview Tool and then fill in the boxes, it'll soon show you who is being listed at that time, very useful for "spying" on the competition or for checking up on your own ads.

Better still, if you have targeted a country / area which you are not in (and therefore couldn't see the ad anyway) you can use this tool to see if your ad is appearing.

In all cases it does not count as an impression and therefore does not harm the CTR.

So if you want to check your Ads, use the Google Ad Preview tool (as recommended by Mr Google)

Internet Marketing and Promotion Specialists
www.S-O-Marketing.co.uk
"Making sure your needle is found in the Internet Haystack"