Hi - Just set up my first Adwords campaign; Google says it's active, but I don't see my ads when I do a search for my targeted keywords. Yes, my IP is located in the country (U.S.) in which I'm running the ads. And yes, all of my keywords meet the required minimum bids. And no, I'm not advertising anything illegal or "adult" related. I've used the Adwords "Diagnostic Tool" and it says there's no problem. So, why aren't my ads appearing? Does Google perform some type of manual review where I have to wait for the ads to appear? I was told that the best benefit of using Google is that you can start driving traffic, literally, within minutes after setting up an Adwords account. Was I misinformed? Why are my ads not running? P.S. I am running Search Network ads only. (Not running anything on the content network.)
Are you getting 0 impressions as statistic? Depending on your quality score your ads are not showed on every search for these keywords. maybe something is happening different this weekend also, check this thread and join the team: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=82303
Update: I have 20 keywords (each keyword is in its own separate AdGroup*) and only one keyword is showing impressions. The remaining 19 keywords are not showing any impressions, and when I do a search for my 19 keywords, I don't see my ads. I just sent an email to Google via the "Contact Us" form. Should be interesting to find out what's going on... *Note: I've created a separate AdGroup for each keyword I'm using, and I've designed the title of the ad to match the exact keyword(s) that is searched for. It's more work, but I think you get a higher CTR when the title of the ad matches the keyword(s) searched for.
You can do the same by inserting a wildcard into your title. Then it matches whatever the searcher has searched for.
What do you mean by "inserting a wildcard" into the title? Can you be more specific, so I can implement this?
Awesome, thanks mad4! The curly brackets should make life a lot easier. Still waiting to hear back from the big G about my keywords not showing impressions. Too bad G doesn't have a phone number for Adwords customer support.
Ok, I found out today why only one of my AdGroups was showing impressions. I had a keyword in most of my AdGroups that tripped some kind of filter, and Google manually reviewed my ads before allowing them to display. It was an innocent word (albeit with sexual implications) and I didn't expect for it to cause problems! Guess I think too innocently. Three other tips to pass on: 1.) If you're experiencing problems, use Google's live chat feature. I wasn't aware that Google had a live chat feature until I started exploring all the contact/help options. Use live chat if you're having problems. The tech guy I talked to "expedited" my request, and Google solved the problem within 24 hours. My ads are now up and running with impressions. 2.) If you use the word "weight loss" you're supposed to have some kind of pharmacy key/id. One of the most commonly used search queries was my keyword and weight loss. I deleted the "keyword and weight loss" AdGroup because it wasn't active b/c of the pharmacy key/id requirement. 3.) If one of the most commonly searched for terms is "your_keyword + alcohol" don't use the word "alcohol" in the ad. Apparently, it's forbidden. There can be no advertising for keywords related to alcohol. All I did was take the most commonly searched for queries (around a particular niche), and try to run ads on them. But I've learned that you can't advertise on certain keywords, and other words cause filters/manual reviews, etc. So be careful when composing your ads and choosing your keywords. *** Just wanted to share my experience. Hopefully, this will help some other new folks. I wish someone had warned me about the manual review, filters, etc. before I began this campaign. A very big annoyance is the fact that your campaign shows as "Active" even though it's not. This is misleading and deceptive to advertisers. If you've tripped some kind of filter, your ads/campaigns should say "pending approval" instead of "active." Google claims it wants to want to be upfront and honest about everything (Do no evil), but they're not very upfront and honest when communicating with advertisers. Bottom line: If a campaign is inactive/pending approval, it should not display as "Active." My $0.02.