If you are a Google AdWords advertiser, there will undoubtedly be times when you need to check to see if your ads are running, what position you’re at and what your competitor’s ads say. In order to avoid gaining true impressions within your account, Anvil encourages all of our clients to utilize Google’s ad preview tool instead of just typing one of their keywords into Google. Last week, Google announced some new improvements to this tool so you can continue to check in on your live ads (or show your boss) without lowering your click through rate (by generating impressions and not clicks) or even worse, by incurring charges from yourself by clicking on your live ads.

1. View and Diagnose your ads as shown on different mobile devices.

No longer do you have to borrow your co-workers iphone/ipad/android/blackberry to see how your ads are showing up if you’re running ads on mobile devices. Just select the device and preview away. You can even select the mobile carrier and watch for any differences between the platforms. If you have ads running that target a specific brick and mortar location, match your location targeting settings within the tool to ensure the correct locations are being shown.

2. Are my ads showing?

If you are logged into your Google AdWords account, the preview tool will confirm if your ads are currently showing or not. If they aren’t, the tool also provides information on why they may not be showing right now (budget depleted, location targeting, negative keywords, etc.)

Remember- this tool has always allowed you to preview ads in different locations – including internationally. That makes the preview tool a great competitive research tool as well.