Low Keyword Bids Can Hold You Back
Let’s not overlook the impact of your keyword bids. If you’re bidding too low, your ads could end up buried so far down the search results they might as well be in the lost and found bin at Heathrow. In some cases, they won’t show at all—no impressions, no clicks, no hope.
To check if this is what’s happening, use Google’s Ad Preview tools or similar diagnostics. They’ll flag when “bid too low” is the reason your ad isn’t showing up, and even suggest a competitive bid to test. Try incrementally raising your bids and see if your impressions improve. Sometimes, just a slight bump is enough to get your ads out of digital purgatory and into the spotlight.
Leverage Diagnostic Tools to Check Your Bids
If you suspect low bids are holding your ads back, diagnostic tools like Ad Preview and Diagnostics come in handy. These tools let you simulate searches to see whether your ad would appear—and, crucially, why it might not.
Check the diagnostics results for any alerts about low bids. Often, it will flag if your bid isn’t high enough for your ad to show on the page. You’ll usually see a suggested bid amount or can experiment by entering your own, letting you immediately gauge whether boosting your bid would resolve the issue.
This takes the guesswork out of troubleshooting—no need to blindly bump bids and hope for the best.
Don’t Overlook the “Enabled” Switch
It might sound basic, but double-check the status of your campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords. If something’s set to “paused” instead of “enabled,” your ads simply won’t run—no matter how perfect everything else is. Scroll through your dashboard and make sure nothing’s inadvertently switched off.
Ad platforms like Google Ads and even smaller platforms can unexpectedly pause components, especially if there are payment hiccups or if you made recent edits. So before troubleshooting complex issues, confirm all your key elements are turned on and ready to serve.
Budget and Bid Amounts: The Missing Piece
Another common issue? Your daily budget and bids might be in a tug-of-war.
If your budget is spent early in the day—or if your bid is eating up a hefty chunk of it per click—your ads can vanish before most folks have even started searching. Imagine setting a $10 bid with only $15 each day; you’re out after just a few clicks, and your campaign sits on the bench the rest of the time.
Worse yet, low bids will cause your ads to limp along, rarely breaking out of obscurity. If your bid isn’t competitive enough to claim a prominent spot, your ad might not even appear at all. Tools like Google Ads’ Ad Preview and Diagnostics can help you spot “bid too low” warnings, nudging you to test different bid amounts and see how visibility changes.
Bottom line: Balance your daily budget and bids so your ads have staying power and don’t get lost in the shuffle.
What if My Keyword Isn’t “Eligible”?
If you notice one of your keywords isn’t marked as “Eligible,” that’s a red flag worth investigating. Usually, this means your ad isn’t showing for searches related to that keyword—often due to an underlying issue.
To get to the bottom of it:
- Check the delivery status in your keyword table. If it’s anything other than “Eligible,” there’s usually a specific reason (and often a handy explanation visible when you hover over it).
- You might see issues like “Low search volume,” “Bid below first page,” or even disapproval due to policy violations.
- For each status, there are unique steps you can take. For example:
- Low search volume: Try broadening your keyword, or switching to a broader match type.
- Bid issues: Bump up your bid to get in the game.
- Disapproved: Dig into the details, then adjust your keyword or ad to comply.
In short—don’t ignore these statuses. Fixing them promptly ensures your ads can start pulling their weight.
Watch Out for Account Errors
Account issues can be another silent culprit. If your account runs into an error—say, billing hiccups, policy violations, or incomplete setup—your ads will quietly pause until you fix the problem.
To spot these, take a peek at the “Errors” column on your account’s performance summary page. It’ll flag issues that need attention, letting you troubleshoot quickly and avoid leaving valuable ad impressions on the table.
Budget Constraints: The Bid-to-Budget Balancing Act
Here's something you might not expect—sometimes, your daily budget gets eaten up by just a handful of clicks, all because your bids are too high compared to the amount you’re willing to spend overall.
Think of it this way: if you're bidding $10 per click, but your daily budget is only $15, you're out of the game after just one or two clicks. This bid-to-budget ratio squeezes your visibility since your ads run out of runway early in the day—if they show at all.
To get more out of your campaigns, aim for a bidding strategy that stretches your budget further rather than burning through it too quickly. Lowering your bids or raising your daily budget helps ensure your ads actually show up when it matters. Keep an eye on this balance using tools like Google Ads' budget reports or even analytics dashboards from agencies like WordStream or SEMrush.
Waiting on Ad Approval: Editorial Review Delays
If you’ve just created a new ad, keyword, or campaign, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t go live instantly. Most ad platforms—Bing included—run every submission through an editorial review before anything hits the search results. Think of it as the ad world’s quality control.
This review usually takes a few hours, but can stretch up to 24 hours in some cases. Product-based ads often require even more patience, as both your feed and your campaigns go through their own approval processes (sometimes adding another day to the timeline). So, if you’re seeing zero impressions right after launching, it’s likely your ads are still in the digital waiting room, pending approval.
Once your ads are given the green light, they’ll start competing for impressions as usual.
Double-Check Your Billing Details
Even the most carefully-constructed campaigns won’t serve a single impression if you don’t have a valid payment method linked to your account. The ad platforms need to know you’re good for it—without a way to bill you, they simply won’t run your ads. So if everything else looks right, take a moment to confirm your credit card or billing info is current and active. This is a common stumbling block, and easily overlooked when you’re focusing on keywords and locations!
Approval Timelines for New Ads and Keywords
Don’t forget, all new ads and keywords need to pass an editorial review before they can start showing. Typically, this process takes just a few hours, but in most cases, it wraps up within a day.
If you’re running product ads—like those shopping campaigns for your snazzy e-commerce store—those can take up to 48 hours for your product feed to process. Plus, if you create your campaign after the feed is approved, tack on another day before your ads go live.
Patience is key, but if it’s been longer than 24–48 hours and you’re still twiddling your thumbs, it might be time to double-check for any policy hiccups or approval roadblocks.