Is AdWords broken?

Missing adverts

[PCInk]

Is there an issue with Google AdWords at the moment?

I have just searched for a term that I added to my account recently to see what position it initially is starting at.

There was two adverts. For a highly competitive term.

Refresh the page and there are a full page of adverts. Refresh again and there are just five. I've refreshed about 10 times and constantly get a different number of adverts - and I've not seen mine yet.

One of the times, there was no adverts at all (which isn't good for Google's profits!)

I've done other searches and the number of adverts jumps about at an amazing rate.

Is AdWords broken - has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone have an explanation?

[eWhisper]

If you keep doing the same search over and over, then Google is trying to serve ads to someone whos not clicking and has odd search behavior and it causes things to start to look odd.

The ad preview tool or the ad diagnostic tool are much better for tracking down why ads aren't being displayed.

[Channel01]

As eWhisper stated, it's best to do any test searches in Google's ad preview tool: [adwords.google.com ]

[PCInk]

I've worked out why my adverts are not showing. Apparently I am not bidding enough (doesn't show this in the AdWords Editor). I've worked out I will need an 80% conversion rate to break even, so 90% conversion rate would be the minimum target!

Are Google serious?

I can't understand why they have a number of advertisers on the keywords but sometimes show no adverts at all.

The Ad Preview might be something useful for me to look at so I might start using that instead if Google are tracking visitors individual searches and clickthroughs and are trying to be clever with it.

[DiscoStu]

If you increase your QS you will decrease the min bid and improve your margins.