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Why are your Google Ads not showing?

If your Google Ads suddenly stop showing, it’s stressful, especially if leads slow down and revenue depends on traffic coming in. The good news? There’s always a reason, and almost always a fix.

Here are the 15 most common reasons your Google Ads aren’t showing, and exactly how to fix each one.

1. Your ads are disapproved or under review

If your ad violates a Google Ads policy, it won’t show at all.

Common culprits:

  • Claims (“best”, “#1”) without proof
  • Misleading content
  • Restricted industries
  • Trademarks
  • Capitalisation issues
  • Landing page problems

Fix:
Go to Ads > Policy manager to see the reason.
Update the ad and request a review.
Reviews typically take 24-48 hours.

2. Your budget is too low

If your daily budget is lower than your CPC, or too low in proportion to the amount of search available, Google simply can’t enter enough auctions.

Example:
Your CPC is £2.50
Your daily budget is £5
– Your ad may only enter 2 auctions per day.

Fix:
Raise your budget OR lower your CPC by:

  • Improving Quality Score
  • Improving ad relevance
  • Tightening targeting

3. Low Ad Rank

Even if your ad is eligible, it won’t show if your Ad Rank is too low.

Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score × Expected Impact of Extensions

Fix:

  • Improve landing page experience
  • Add all (relevant) extensions
  • Improve ad copy relevance
  • Increase your bid

4. Negative keywords blocking your ads

A single broad or phrase-match negative keyword can block entire search themes, even if unintentional.

Fix:
Go to Tools > Negative keywords and audit all lists.
Remove or loosen overly restrictive negatives.

5. Your audience is too small

This mainly affects:

  • Remarketing
  • Custom segments
  • Customer lists
  • Optimised targeting

But it can also be true if you are targeting niche keywords with minimal searches, Google may deem them low search volume.

If the audience size is below Google’s threshold, your ads won’t serve.

Fix:

  • Expand date range for remarketing
  • Add more traffic sources
  • Use website visitors + similar audiences
  • Widen geographic targeting
  • If keywords are low search volume, consider adding broader variants or broader match types

6. Your bids are too low

If competitors bid higher, you may simply be losing the auction due to cost.

Fix:

  • Increase Max CPC or Target CPA/ROAS
  • Improve ad relevance to lower CPC naturally

7. Billing issues

A surprisingly common cause.

Symptoms:

  • “Payment declined”
  • “Your ads are not running due to a payment issue”
  • No impressions today

Fix:
Update your payment method and wait a little while until impressions pick up again. This can sometimes take a few hours.

8. Your geo-targeting is too small

Targeting tiny areas (like a few postcodes) often results in no auctions.

Fix:

  • Expand radius
  • Add surrounding towns
  • Enable “Presence or interest” targeting instead of “Presence only” (but pro-tip, make sure you exclude categorically irrelevant locations if you do this).

9. Keywords or campaigns are paused

Sometimes, a user pauses a campaign and forgets. It happens.

Fix:
In Google Ads:
Go to Campaigns > Filter > Status = Paused and review activity.
Repeat this for Ad Groups, Ads, and Keywords.

10. Scheduling blocking impressions

If your ads are scheduled to run only at certain hours, they simply won’t show outside of them.

Fix:
Go to Ad schedule and review, consider whether to:

  • Extend live hours
  • Add extra days

11. Poor landing page experience

Google may restrict impressions if your landing page is:

  • Slow
  • Not mobile friendly
  • Not secure (no SSL)
  • Has thin content
  • Has popups blocking content

Fix:
Use:

  • PageSpeed Insights
  • Google Lighthouse
  • GA4 > Tech > Page Load
  • Heatmapping tools like Microsoft Clarity or Lucky Orange

to improve user experience.

12. Auction outages

Google Ads occasionally has system-wide issues that impact:

  • Delivery
  • Reporting
  • Bidding
  • Auctions

During these outages, ads may temporarily not serve.

Fix:
Check:

  • Google Ads Status Dashboard
  • Reddit /r/PPC
  • Twitter (X) #ppcchat
  • Search Engine Roundtable live updates

Usually resolved within hours.

13. Broad match chaos

Broad match keywords can trigger extremely unexpected queries, or none at all.

Sometimes broad match gets “stuck” and stops serving due to poor relevance signals.

Fix:

  • Add phrase match variations
  • Use Smart Bidding rather than manual
  • Improve conversion tracking so broad match has signals

14. Drops in search demand

If fewer people are searching for your keyword, your impressions drop, which can happen even if everything is set up correctly.

This can happen due to:

  • Seasonality
  • Industry changes
  • Local events
  • Competitor behaviour

Fix:
Use Google Trends
Use Search Console > Queries last 28 days
Compare year-on-year searches for the keyword set.

15. You’re checking the wrong tools

Many advertisers expect to see their ad every time they search, but:

That’s not how Google Ads works.

If you search repeatedly without clicking, Google eventually stops showing you the ad because it believes you aren’t interested.

The correct way to check visibility:

  • Use Ad Preview & Diagnosis Tool
  • Use Search Terms report
  • Use Impressions + Impression Share metrics
  • Use Auction Insights

Never rely on manually Googling, there are simply too many variables to account for that could determine why an ad would or wouldn’t show, and this method is unreliable.

Final thoughts

Most of the time, when your Google Ads aren’t showing, the cause is one of the issues above, and you can fix it quickly once you know where to look.

If you want a free audit of your Google Ads account to find exactly why your ads aren’t appearing, contact us today and we can get you back up and running in no time.