Online visibility is SO important. No need to preach to the choir. From time to time we have a client who runs a test search and wonders why they didn’t happen to see themselves prominently within the search results. This might be you, and it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to query. Google’s systems have become much more complex over the years, leading to several possible explanations.

Firstly, just so we’re all on the same page, we are talking about the Google Ads sponsored search results that appear at the top of the search results, and not the Google Maps pack or the organic search results that appear lower down the page, and are an entirely different beast.

The Most Common Explanations as to Why You Didn’t See Your Business When Running a Test Search

1. Personalised Search Results on Your Device: people often don’t realise that Google personalises results for your device/account based on what you do and don’t click on in the search results. And this can happen quite quickly when running a few searches and not following normal user behaviour (and not clicking on the search results and spending time on pages etc). Google is quick to respond if you are behaving like a bot and not clicking as a normal human would, and will often shuffle around the search results, push the Google Ads search results to the bottom of the page (or not at all) and so on. A telltale sign of this occurring is if you don’t see any other Google Ads search results showing at the top of the page on your device.

2. Intermittent Ad Serving Due to Limited Budget: Google may intermittently show our listings throughout the course of the day if your current nominated click budget is maxing out. If you would like to consider increasing the maximum daily Google Click Cap to help maximise exposure, please just let us know and we’ll be happy to discuss, and give you some honest advice (as always, we don’t make a single cent from Google Clicks).

3. Broader Keywords with Lower Commercial Intent: If you search on broader keywords it’s possible that these might have lower conversion performance and that we are therefore bidding less aggressively on these and giving more priority to higher converting keywords that will help us to maximise overall conversion numbers and ROI. For example if a broader keyword converts at only one-third that of other better converting keywords, we will heavily optimise and bid accordingly to ensure your investment is going to areas where it will deliver the best results.

4. Other ‘Performance Signals’ that Indicate a Low Conversion Probability: because we heavily optimise and bid based on performance signals, there may be other factors that indicate a lower conversion probability (based on large performance datasets), resulting in our listing not showing. For example, based on the type of device you are searching from (smartphone, computer, tablet etc), time of day, geo location, RLSA (re-marketing lists for search ads), affinity and in-market audiences, interests and so on. Ultimately, if conversion probability is high, we will bid aggressively (and maximise visibility), and if conversion probability is low we will bid accordingly to focus your budget in the areas it will have greatest impact.

Other Reasons Why You Might Not See Your Listing

5. There Might Be Something Else Happening on Your Device: For example please make sure you are searching on Google.com.au, not another smaller search engine by accident, as these can sometimes hijack your device and set themselves as the default. Or there could possibly be an issue with Google accurately detecting your location and showing localised search results for your area. This is highly unusual, but can happen on rare occasions. VPN’s and other over-zealous security software can also sometimes create issues.

Are you seeing other Google Ads showing at the top of search results? If you’re not, then this is usually a good indicator that something funny might be going on with your device/web browser.

6. Our Listings Might Not Be Scheduled to Run: This is not that common, but you might have requested that we run our campaigns only certain hours. Or for example if you are searching after midnight, there is a good chance our listings will not be scheduled for their normal start until 5 or 6am.

7. Issues with Declined Payments: In the event of payment issues, Google tends to be quite quick to temporarily take our Google Ads campaigns offline and block ad serving until resolved.

There is ALWAYS a Good Reason Why

If you are an active Google Ads client please send our friendly team through a quick email, along with a few screenshots, and we’ll be happy to triple-check, and give you some further insights and options.

Running Test Searches is Not the Best Gauge of Visibility

Google’s systems have become extremely complex over the years with a huge number of moving parts. And when we are talking about tens/hundreds of thousands (or often millions) of search impressions in an average month, while it can be interesting to run a test search every now and again, the reality is that this is not going to give you the best or most accurate gauge of overall results. Perhaps a little like looking at one grain of sand on a beach.

We proactively monitor and optimise based on Google’s complete raw numbers (like Impr. Top and Impr. Abs. Top, which tell us on a percentage basis how often our listings appear at the top of search results). This generally gives us a much better ‘full picture’ dataset and view of what’s going on, informing our ongoing optimisation.

You’ll generally get a well rounded feel for performance and results by looking at our weekly/monthly dashboard reports which touch on metrics like actual click-throughs and enquiries and conversions and look at trends over time. Ultimately if we’re getting good volumes of click throughs and conversions at a reasonable cost per conversion that’s often the most important thing for most businesses, because running repeated test searches can easily drive you crazy if you let it — due to personalisation and the many layers of optimisation.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, as a top 3% Google certified agency, we strive to offer the best Google Ads management in the country and our focus is always on squeezing as much value and as many clicks and enquiries/sales as we possibly can from your investment in Google Ads Advertising. And depending on your budget, this does not always mean ranking #1 on Google on every single keyword every second of every day. You might be interested in reading our blog post about why a rank #1 position via Google Ads (AdWords) is not always best.

Again, if you’re an active client and need specific insights related to campaigns we run for you, feel free to send us an email — we’re happy to help