Troubleshooting Tools

About the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool

The Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool enables you to view your ads as they would appear on a regular Google search results page for most users, without accruing extra impressions for your ad.

To perform a test search with the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, follow these steps:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/adpreview
2. Enter a query.
3. Enter a Google domain, such as google.com or google.fr.
4. Select a display language.
5. Select a location. You can choose a location from the drop-down menus, or you can enter specific latitude and longitude coordinates.
6. Click Preview.

Make sure you sign in before using the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool so we can help you diagnose why your ad isn’t appearing in the search results. You’ll see a message that tells you the reasons why and what you can do to improve your ad’s visibility. You can also use the 'Diagnose keywords' option in the "More Actions" menu in the Keywords tab to diagnose multiple keywords at once.

This feature is also available for mobile ads.

Ad Preview and Diagnosis Best Practices

We suggest you view your ad through the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool instead of performing a regular Google search. When you search for your ad multiple times on Google, it can affect your ad position by racking up many ad impressions and lowering your clickthrough rate (CTR), possibly even increasing your costs. Use this tool to see how your ads look without any negative effect on your campaign's performance.

The Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool is especially useful for seeing if your ad is appearing for users in a specific geographical location. Even if you yourself are outside of your targeted locations (and therefore won't see your ad on Google), the tool can preview ads from any location you specify. Enter one of your keywords and see how Google search results appear for someone in the specified location. Similarly, you can preview ads in various languages that you target.

Here are a few more best practices:

• Only enter a keyword if it exists in your campaign and is active.
• Only specify a language or location that your campaign is targeting.
• Use the mobile ads version of the tool to see how that type of ad appears on mobile devices.