Ads not appearing very often

what am I missing

[gmac17]

I'm paying for a fairly competitive keyword. Adwords is telling me the average position for this keyword is 2.9, but I'd say 50% of the time I search I either don't see the keyword at all or it is in position #5 or 6. Rarely is it in the top 3.

Additionally, when co-workers in other cities type it in they often don't see it either.

we are not coming anywhere near spending our daily budget.

what am I missing?

[netmeg]

I've had this happen all the time, and while adwords support has told me essentially that I'm nuts, and that it's not supposed to work this way, I've found that I've had to double or triple my daily budget on some phrases in order to get to where I really want to be. Obviously, that's risky - you have to pay close attention to make sure you aren't suddenly actually PAYING that extra budget - but you might try it for a day or two, and see if it works.

I have campaigns running now where I have to set a daily budget of $1300 in order to ACTUALLY spend $800 per day. And as far as I know, there's nothing wrong with the ad groups or keywords - mostly campaigns that have at least two or three years worth of history, ok or great quality scores, and CTR of 10-50%.

[gmac17]

my daily budget is $2k, I am spending $250 per day. ugh.

can't hurt to bring it up to $5k!

[jcmoon]

I've had the CEO come to me and ask why our ads aren't showing. I'd open Google, search and bam, there are the ads. Then, we'd go to his computer and his results didn't have our ad.

You may want to try clearing your cashe, then searching. I have no idea why, but this works for us.

[Rehan]

I would guess it's related to the issue discussed in this thread: [webmasterworld.com...]

If you search for the term often, then that history of searching (and probably what you've clicked) seems to affect the ads that are shown.

[NatronZero]

Even in ad preview, Rehan?

[Rehan]

I mentioned in the other thread that it has been happening even in Ad Preview this week, and AWA confirmed it.