Many advertisers repeatedly search for their AdWords ads using Google’s search engine. Doing that is detrimental to your advertising success for these reasons:

1. If you are searching and not clicking, you are increasing your impressions and lowering your click through rate (CTR).
2. A lower CTR increases your advertising costs.
3. One goal of Google’s system is to display the most relevant ads – if you don’t click, their system assumes your ads are not relevant. You can actually DISABLE your ads by doing this.
4. Google’s system also tracks ad performance by geo-location. It may decide that your ads aren’t relevant in your geographic area and stop displaying them there. If your business operates only in a local area this can seriously affect your potential in that market.
5. Google modifies the ads and organic results it shows individual searchers so you’re not seeing what your potential visitors see anyway.

It is far better to use the Ads Diagnostic tool within your Google AdWords account to determine which ad, if any, your keyword phrases are triggering plus Google Analytics to see precisely what positions your ads are in for any given search. I’ve provided step-by-step instructions for doing both:

• Using the Google AdWords Ads Diagnostic Tool
• Checking actual ad position using Google Analytics Keyword Positions