Fifteen Reasons Your Search Ads Are Not Showing, and What to Do

You work hard on your search advertising settings, go live, and nothing shows at all.
Some of you will have been through that, and some may be in the middle of it right now.

This article covers the reasons search ads fail to run, and what to do about them.

※ The articles below go into more detail on how to manage search advertising and how to set a budget. Do have a look at them as well.
Related article:
What is search advertising? A plain explanation of how it works, how to set a budget and how to manage it

1. Payment setup is incomplete

When search ads are not showing, the first thing to check is the payment setup.
Search ads only run once you have set up payment in advance.
Delivery may have stopped simply because no credit card is registered or no payment method has been set.

▼How to fix it

You can either pay manually by bank transfer or choose automatic payment by credit card.
We recommend automatic credit card payment so you do not forget to pay and run short of balance.
Once payment is set up, check the balance.
In Google Ads, go to [Billing and payments] from the tools at the top of the admin screen to see the balance on the account.
In Yahoo! Ads, the balance is under [Account balance] in the admin screen.

2. The budget is limiting delivery

The budget may be holding delivery back.
Search advertising lets you set a daily budget.
Once the campaign budget you set is used up, there is nothing left and the ads stop showing.
Check the campaign status screen: ‘Limited by budget’ in red tells you the budget is the constraint.

▼How to fix it

・Raise the campaign budget
　The daily budget may be too low, so start by raising the campaign budget.
・Lower the cost per click
　A high cost per click uses up the daily budget quickly, so lowering it may solve the problem.

3. The bid is too low

Search ads run through an auction against your competitors. If your bid on a keyword is too low you lose out to their bids, your ad position falls and the ad stops showing. In this case the ad’s status column reads ‘Below first page bid’.

▼How to fix it

・Raise the maximum cost per click
　If a low bid is why the ad is not being placed or shown, raising the bid makes it more likely to appear.
・Be selective about keywords
　Budget constraints often make it hard to raise bids. In that case, pick out the keywords worth concentrating on and adjust the bids there.

4. The status is set to paused

For an ad to show, its status has to be ‘Enabled’.
Even if the ad itself is enabled, it will not run while another level such as the campaign is paused, so campaign, ad group, keyword and ad all need to be enabled.

▼How to fix it

・Change the status from ‘Paused’ to ‘Enabled’
　Nothing runs until every level is enabled, so check them all carefully.

5. The end date is in the past

If the run dates are not right, for instance if the campaign end date is in the past, the ad will not show. The start date is the date the ad begins running and the end date is the date it stops. Take care with this when you reuse a past campaign to run ads again.

▼How to fix it

・Change the schedule settings
　Updating the end date solves it.
　And of course nothing runs if the start date is in the future, so watch for that too.

6. The ad has not passed Google’s review

Ads cannot run if they have not passed Google’s review, or if the review is not yet complete.
To keep advertising safe and appropriate for everyone, Google reviews ads against the Google Ads policies.
Go to [Attributes] > [Policy approval status] and filter by under review and by disapproved to check.

▼How to fix it

・Fix any ads that have been disapproved
　Read the Google Ads policies closely and make the fixes. Check whether the ad copy or the landing page it leads to contains inappropriate wording such as discrimination or violence, or overblown claims such as ‘you will definitely lose five kilos’.
・Re-check the advertising rules, that is character counts, symbols and wording

Google Ads policies ／ Yahoo! Ads publication standards

7. The quality score is low

The quality score is a measure of your ad’s quality compared with other advertisers, determined by expected click rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. In Google Ads it is a rating from 1 to 10 against a keyword.

▼How to fix it

・Improve the quality score
　You need to review how closely related the search keyword is to the ad copy, and the landing page content is to the search keyword.

8. The targeting is too narrow

Google Ads lets you target by age and gender.
If the ad is not appearing, you may have narrowed the target too far.
Also, if you try to check the ad yourself but do not fall within the age or gender you set, the ad will not show.
Even then, there is no problem as long as the targeting is set correctly and impressions are being counted.

▼How to fix it

・Review the settings
　Check whether you have narrowed the targeting too far, and widen the target settings.

9. No keywords have been set

To state the obvious, ads will not show if no keywords have been set.
For example, if you want the ad to show on the exact match search term ‘okonomiyaki Osaka’ but
you have mistakenly set the keyword as ‘okonomiyaki’, the ad will not appear.

▼How to fix it

Review your keyword settings.

10. Nobody is searching the keyword

If you have chosen keywords nobody searches for, the ad will struggle to appear.
Check the ad’s status column, and if it reads ‘Low search volume’, review the keyword.

▼How to fix it

You need to choose keywords that can realistically bring in search traffic.
Use Google Keyword Planner to check keyword search volumes.

11. You keep searching the same keyword yourself

If you search the same keyword over and over yourself to see whether your search ads are running, the ad can stop appearing.
That is because of how search engines work: they decide ‘this user never clicks the ad’ and stop showing it to that user.

▼How to fix it

・Check with the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool in Google Ads
　Rather than searching yourself to see whether the ad is showing, use the tool and avoid generating wasted impressions.
・Clear the browser cache and search again
　It is also worth resetting the cache once and searching again.

12. A negative keyword has been set

A negative keyword is a keyword that stops the ad showing on a search.
If one of your active keywords is also set as a negative keyword, the ad will not show.
Watch out for ‘conflicting keywords’ too. That is the state where a keyword already running has also been excluded.
Google Ads raises an alert when keywords conflict.
Check again for negative keywords and for keyword conflicts.

▼How to fix it

• Check whether any active keyword is also set as a negative keyword
• Check the match type of your negative keywords

13. The target locations are wrong

Where target locations are set, the ad will not show outside them.
Search advertising targets on the basis of IP address.
Depending on the location attached to the IP address, you may be read as being outside the target area, and the ad will not show.

▼How to fix it

・Check with the preview tool in the admin screen
・Re-check the target location settings

14. The targeting settings are wrong

Google Ads lets you target particular ages and genders.
If the ad is not appearing, you may have set these wrongly.

▼How to fix it

・Review the gender and age brackets you have set
　Check that the attributes you want to reach, gender and age bracket, are enabled, and check your targeting exclusions as well.
・Check in a private browser window
・Clear the browser’s browsing data (cache)

15. The remarketing list is too small

Ads will not run if the remarketing list, the list of people who have visited the website, is too small.
As things stand, you cannot run ads unless at least 1,000 active users have accumulated over the past 30 days.
For a site with little traffic, running remarketing ads at all can be difficult.
If the settings are fine but a campaign with remarketing set shows zero impressions, there may simply be a lag.
Give it a few days. As long as there is nothing wrong with the delivery settings, all is well.

▼How to fix it

・Increase traffic to the site so you have a large enough remarketing list
・Add more pages to the audience list
・Place the tag on every page

16. In closing

This article has set out 15 causes to check when search ads are not showing,
and what to do about each.
When you notice your ads are not showing, work through this article and check them one at a time.
If that still does not resolve it, we recommend asking Google or Yahoo.

Related article:
What is search advertising? A plain explanation of how it works, how to set a budget and how to manage it