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A lot of time and effort goes into the management and optimization of Google Shopping Ads. The competition is fierce. And, as I’m sure you can empathize with, it would be extremely frustrating to have to go through all that trouble only for your efforts to be rendered useless.
Have you ever run a Shopping Ad that should have gone up but didn’t? Maybe it even ran for a bit, but you’re suddenly no longer able to see it. Or, maybe, you check the data available in your Merchant Center account and find that a certain ad is not up (or otherwise, is inaccessible from certain devices.)
Why does that happen? And, how can you fix it?
Rest easy! The world is not over just yet. There are perfectly plausible reasons why your Google Shopping Ads are not showing, as well as solutions that can fix it it:
You Have Been Outbid by the Competition
This first reason is kind of a no-brainer, but it confuses a lot of beginner marketers anyway.
That is, the fact that bidding on an Ad does not necessarily mean that you will win. Again, this is completely beginner stuff. It’s only common sense that your ad will not be placed if you happen to bid lower than your competitor — thus, losing the ad spot (rightfully) to them.
If there is evidence for an ad being placed, but you can’t find it on the first page (as you might have expected), being outbid may mean that your ad has been featured on the latter pages instead. So, if you’re confused, go through a couple of pages and see if that’s what happened.
Solution!
Without knowing how much the winning bid cost and the circumstances behind your loss, the only real solution to ‘being outbid by your competitors’ is to become more competitive and win.
For this, you may want to look into bidding solutions for Shopping Ads that can estimate the effectiveness of your bids based on relevant parameters and get you the ad placement that you desire. And, fortunately, there are now plenty of tools that can help you with doing so.
Just take into consideration that you’ll have to be careful about what tool you use. Google, of course, has Smart Shopping and their Smart Bidding strategies available for offer.
But, if you want to make sure that you have an edge over your competitors, you’ll probably need something smarter.
Something that will be able to boost your conversions by utilizing more granular data to incorporate all the relevant bidding variables and create more bidding clusters for maximum optimization.
Now, to help matters along: We’ve recently stumbled upon a tool that does exactly this! It’s a plugin that works directly on your Google Ads account, enabling you to enhance your bidding power and your product feed easily.
Bidbrain
The tool in question is Bidbrain, a newly developed AI (Artificial Intelligence) bidding engine for Google Shopping Ads that was developed by Speqta PLC, a Nasdaq listed company that has a rich, pre-existing history developing AI engines for eCommerce retailers.
This software solution allows you to choose your desired ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and promises total transparency — because it works seamlessly in your Google Ads account and allows for real-time bid placement tracking.
By making use of all the variables available and applying machine learning into your process, you can maximize your conversions while limiting the cost of advertising to suit your determined budget (i.e. Bidbrain reports that its clients see an increase in sales, ranging from +20-50%, at the same or higher ROAS).
Of course, it should also be noted that a more streamlined bidding process should prove to be generally beneficial to your business’s growth as well.
Your Google Shopping Ad is Paused
Another reason why your Shopping Ads may not be showing is that they’ve been “paused.” Merchants are given the ability to ‘start’, ‘pause’, or ‘remove’ their campaigns by Google, and ads that are either ‘paused’ or ‘removed’ will not be shown on Google Search results.
In a previous effort to maximize your ROAS, you may have temporarily paused certain Ads to boost your more better-performing ads, and forgotten to start it back up again (causing the ad to become temporarily inactive on your account.)
This is another one of those no-brainer kinds of issues that can arise if you’re a beginner, or just easily frazzled (so don’t worry, it can happen to anyone!)
You can view the status of your ads from the Change History section of your Google Ads account to check for this issue.
To make things simple, there’s even a Status filter that you can use to root out all your paused ads (just make sure that you select the ‘show all’ option so that you don’t miss any paused campaigns that are hidden.)
Solution!
Fortunately, the solution for this particular issue is pretty simple! All you need to do is ‘start’ the campaigns that you’ve paused once more to get them running again.
The only reason why this fix may not work for you is if your Ads have been disapproved — rendering them ineligible to be shown to users.
For this, you’ll need to personally review Google’s current ad policies to ensure that you are compliant. Otherwise, your ads will never be able to run properly.
You Have Disapproved Ads
Google is very strict about enforcing its policies and regulations to ensure that its Ads are safe for viewing and appropriate for all users.
You can manually check an Ad’s approval status on the Campaign Ads tab. There are three status options available after review: approved, disapproved, and limited approval. If you fall into either of the latter categories, your Ad will not show on Google Search Results.
Note, one of the main reasons for disapproved Google Shopping Ads stem from inappropriate or inaccurate images or illustrations.
Also, in general, if the data that you provide does not match the product information of a certain product on your website or is, at any point, not truthful to the product’s specifications, then your Ad will be disapproved and Google will stop showing it on Shopping Ads and free listings.
Solution!
Luckily, Google has procedures in place to allow you to appeal for the approval of your disapproved Ads — especially if you have justifiable grounds and can prove that the Ad was disapproved erroneously.
But, even if the Ad was truly not compliant with Google’s policies, you are free to modify the Ad to meet the proper requirements and resubmit it for review whenever you want.
It might help to try out products like the aforementioned SaaS solution, Bidbrain™ (which doubles as an excellent product feed optimizer) that will allow you to optimize your feed — thus increasing your chances of getting it approved.
Your Bids Have Surpassed Your Daily Budget
Your budget can also play a very key role in whether or not your Shopping Ads are in proper order. After all, if your allocated daily budget is exhausted before the day’s end, you’ll be missing out on a bunch of potential impressions, clicks, and conversions.
You can check for this issue under All Campaigns. Your budget’s status will appear on the Status column (a.i. if your budget is too low, a red notification will appear to notify you that your Shopping Ads are not being shown as often because of a “Limited Budget”.)
Solution!
The simple solution here is, of course, to either increase your daily budget or lower your bids.
Of course, just remember that lowering your bid may lower your chance of winning auctions that you may have won easily previously — a similar warning should also be said about increasing your bid too high (and risking potential losses if you are unable to meet your desired ROAS.)
If you’re not sure how to strike the balance between your budget and your bidding levels, Google does offer a “recommended daily budget” function that may help.
You Inputted Incorrect Billing Information
If your Shopping Ads are not showing up at all, then one of the first things that you should consider is whether you’ve given Google accurate billing information.
After all, Google will not (and it has no reason to) run your ads if it encounters any billing issues that would prevent it from charging you.
Solution!
So, make sure to verify that you have the proper (updated) billing information inputted in your account settings in order to avoid any potential billing mishaps.
You Have Account Linking Issues
If your Google Ads account is not properly linked to your Google Merchant Center account, this can cause complications in the proper functioning of your product feed (thus, disrupting the progress of your campaigns).
Solution!
You can check for this issue by logging into your Google Ads account and going to Tools & Settings > “Linked Accounts.”
There, you can check out the status of all linked accounts. And, of course, if you find that your Merchant Center account and your Google Ads account are not linked, it is simple enough to log on to your Merchant Center account and get it all set up.
Your Negative Keywords Nullified Your Campaign
Negative keywords, which allow you to ‘disable’ or prevent your ads from showing up for queries that are not likely to result in a sale, can be the key to saving yourself a whole lot of money from wasted ad spend.
But because of this very same characteristic, they can also cause you quite a bit of trouble if you are not careful — by preventing your ads from showing up for potentially relevant queries.
Solution!
Fortunately, there is a way of reviewing your enabled Negative Keywords list to ensure that none of them is restricting your ad from appearing for relevant queries.
You may find that you accidentally applied a certain list to the wrong campaign, or included a relevant keyword by mistake. Either way, it should be easy enough to get back on your account and fix the issue.
You’re Using Ad Scheduling
If you have ever used Ad Scheduling in the past, then this might be the reason why your Google Shopping Ads are not showing. This function, after all, makes it so that you can set up your ads to only appear when your target audience is the most active — based on their previous activity.
It should be noted that, while Shopping Ad campaigns do not naturally lend themselves to Ad Scheduling, there are still cases where you might find yourself using this function (i.e. for ads that are “limited by budget” and thus require less active time.)
Solution!
In any case, if your ads are not showing up and you’ve used the Ad Schedule feature in your Google Ads account even just once before, it’s important that you double-check it now to make sure that you either have the right time applied or that you’ve removed any Ad Schedules that may no longer be necessary.
Your Product Feed is Still In Review
It’s important to remember that your product feed will need to be reviewed and approved by Google to make sure that it is compliant with all of their standards and regulations. Especially as, if your product feed is still in review, it will not be featured in free product listings.
Solution!
The key to this issue is to simply exercise a bit of patience. It can take roughly 24 to 72 hours before Google even begins to review your product feed.
If you’re getting antsy, you can check your log files to see if there has been any activity there. That should at least tell you that the review is in progress.
Otherwise, if you still do not receive approval of your feed by the end of the 5th day, you are free to contact Google to personally request the status of your review.
Your Quality Score is Too Low
Google gives a quality score for each of the products that you submit to Google Shopping.
For this, they measure a variety of factors that will allow them to maintain a certain level of control over which ads are displayed for certain queries as well as the perceived quality of the product in question.
And, as is to be expected, if your product receives a low-quality score, it can cause your ads to stop appearing on Google Search results.
Solution!
There are multiple reasons why your product’s quality score may be suffering. One of the more common reasons is if you’ve changed that product’s ID recently. If this is the case, then you will have to wait for Google to recognize the listing’s quality once more as they attach quality scores to Product IDs (which is why it is usually recommended to preserve them).
You may also want to check the quality of your landing page, as a generic or poor-performing landing page experience can lower your quality score quite significantly.
In either case, this is just another situation where you may benefit from the use of a product feed optimizer like Bidbrain, which has added functionalities that can help improve the quality score of your product feed.
Why Are Your Google Shopping Ads Not Showing?
Your Google Shopping Ads not showing is no reason to panic. The issues themselves all have easy fixes. So, instead, take it as an opportunity to further improve your existing campaigns.
Of course, it’s important to remember that, if you are really struggling with keeping things afloat, there’s no reason to avoid using an intelligent, AI solution like Bidbrain to take a load off your shoulders and give yourself the opportunity to focus on other aspects of your business.
