Businesses often consider investing in Google Ads to drive massive sales and user base instantly. However, not everyone is successful in running high ROI Google Ads. If correctly set up, Google Ads can work efficiently, and you can reach more relevant customers within your budget. But, what do you do if your ads aren’t showing in Google search results?
This detailed article will help you with the reasons behind non-deliverable Google Ads. Further, you will also discover effective tips to fix these issues.
Now let’s head to the top yet proven reasons that restrict your Google Ads from delivering.
1. Incorrect Payment Setting: Google Ads offers two payment options, i.e., Automatic & Manual. Via manual payment, you can add a specific amount in Google Ads and run ads until you reach your pre-set payment threshold. With Automatic payments, you are charged monthly based on your expenses. Make sure your payment method does not have any errors. This should be a weekly check, just to make sure everything it topped up and your ads have the ability to show.

Source: blog.bit.ai
2. Bidding is Either Too Low or Too High: Keywords play a vital role in Google Ads. You need to find the best optimized keywords and set the appropriate bid accordingly. Setting bids that drive low Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and high clicks are the ultimate goals of every Ads. So, find keywords that have high clicks and low bid rates.
If the maximum (CPC) bid you set for a particular keyword is below the average cost of your keywords, your settings may not allow for your ads to deliver.
Always ensure your Ads are free from such conflicts and the entire group of keywords is delivering high conversions with low CPC. Committing this bidding mistake disturbs your results and drags you far behind your expectations.
Use a bid simulator to find the impact of increasing bids and check which keyword can give you desirable results.
3. Adding Keywords with Low Monthly Searches: Most people prefer using Keyword Planner to find highly effective keywords for your Ads. However, selecting the wrong keywords for your campaign can ruin your investment. Google continuously checks your keyword’s monthly searches. Based on your keyword searches, your ads are shown to the users.
Interestingly, if a keyword you’re targeting has little to no search traffic every month, the ads you have created in relation to that keyword may be ineligible to show.
Once Google notices that you’re targeting an extremely low-volume keyword, it’ll make it temporarily inactive within your account. Selecting high quality, relevant keywords (with decent search volume) for your advertising campaign can help you reach the customers you want.
4. Scheduling or Targeting Your Ads Incorrectly: Scheduling your ads is highly effective to keep your Ads active for a restricted time frame. Managing the active time of your ads ensures you are showing the ads at the optimal time of the day. However, sometimes scheduling too narrowly may not deliver you the results as expected.
Alongside ad scheduling, you also have the option to target the ads based on location. These two restrictions in conjunction can limit the amount of searches available to trigger your ads significantly.
The best way to deal with this situation is to use the observation setting when selecting a new parameter to narrow your campaign. It’s an intelligent way to get practical insights into your Ads without narrowing their visibility, and only activating the restrictions after they are validated by data.
5. Marking Active Keywords as Negative Keywords: What if your ads are being displayed to irrelevant keywords? This happens often when you have included broad match keywords in an Ad Group. With every irrelevant keyword, you are not only wasting money on errant clicks but also getting irrelevant user data muddying the waters.
Using negative keywords is important, but make sure they are not so restrictive that they are blocking relevant search results.
6. Your Landing Pages Aren’t Optimized: When determining the rank of paid search results, Google doesn’t only consider the relevancy of your Ad itself; it also looks at the relevance of your landing page.
Your landing page is one of the assets that require special attention if you want a highly optimized campaign. Your Ads’ quality score is the calculative outcome of Landing Page relevance, Keyword relevance, and Ad relevance. Hence, a fully optimized landing page is a must when running successful ads.
Yet, marketers skip checking their landing page and optimizing it for the Paid users. An un-optimized landing page hurts the website, and hence the Ads are left with a low Ad Rank. The low Ad rank is one of the prime reasons why your ads may look perfect, but refuse to show in paid slots.
The best way to find landing page optimization opportunities is using PageInsights or GTMetrix. These tools will give you a detailed analysis of your landing page.
7. You Have Unapproved Ads: Approval of your ads does not always mean that you are earning good traffic and conversions on your Ads. Yet, inappropriate ads are quickly disapproved, resulting in zero impressions.
It’s essential to keep a keen eye on your ads and regularly check the ads status after you have created them. Post rejection, you are always provided with the best-possible reason behind the rejection and how you can resolve those issues.
Below are the prominent reasons why your Ads are rejected:
- Spelling or grammar errors
- Capitalization issues
- Punctuation and symbols
- Gimmicky copy
- “Click Here”
- Destination mismatch
- Non-standard spacing
- Copyright or trademark infringement
- Alternate CTAs that discourage a click
- Repetition
- Unsuitable content
- Issues with your post-click landing page
- Misrepresentation of the expected content
8. Not Having Patience: YES! Google Ads is all about experimenting with your Ad Copies, target audience, keyword selection, etc. Whether you are a newbie in the PPC niche or an expert, you must retain patience to let the Google Ads run efficiently and deliver your expectations.
However, many marketers lack patience and continue editing the Ads, resulting in an invisible campaign. Let Google decide how your Ads will perform. Once your Ads start delivering, you can make the required tweaks to reach your expected results and run the Ads with high ROI.
There are many reasons your ads may not be delivering, but if you go through the above tips, you should iron out any issues you might be having. Remember, daily monitoring and keeping up to date with your campaign health is crucial to catch problems fast, and resolve them before they put a damper on your business.