So you have done your research, planned your strategy, built your marketing campaign and set your ads live, but now you wonder how your ads are shown to users and if your ads actually turn up in specific search results. That’s where Ad Preview comes to your rescue.
The Ad Preview & Diagnosis Tool in Google Ads helps you identify why your ad or ad extension may not be appearing for a specific Google search. This helps you understand the associations made by Google on your keywords, extensions, ad content and ad settings like location, device, language or audience lists that you configured for your Google Ads.
Ad Preview gives you real-time search results preview based on customizable parameters. You can see how your ads show up in search results without actually searching for your ads.
Benefits of using Ad Preview
But why should you use Ad Preview instead of just searching your own keywords in Google to see your ads? Ad Preview allows you to do more than just see your ad in action:
- Allows you to see how your ads would look like on different devices (Mobile, Desktop and Tablet)
- You can simulate your location to preview your ads for different locations
- It allows you to preview based on Audience segment
- It will tell you if your ad and/or it’s extensions are not showing and explain why (such as whether you are not targeting that keyword or location)
- Previewing ads won’t impact your metrics (such as Click Through Rate or Impressions)
- You are also able to share the previewed search result via URL (though the preview gives a “real-time” result, so it may change after sharing)
Using Ad Preview
Navigate to Tools & Settings >> Planning >> Ad Preview and Diagnosis from your Google Ads web platform.
Choose the settings you want to test and do a quick search. You might see something like this:
This is an anonymized search results page. If you sign in before you search you have the option to choose an audience segment you want to test for.
So, next time you publish your Ad Campaigns make sure to do some quick searches in this tool to check your ad impressions.
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