For every Google Ads advertiser who’s wondered whether their ad is showing or not for specific terms/in specific place/on specific devices the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool is a vital part of your toolbox. It’s a great way to troubleshoot what might be the issue before calling into Google Ads support.

Recently, Google has added some new features to the tool to help advertisers. So I’ll go through the new features so you can start using them right away.

See If Your Audiences Are Seeing Your Ads

This is a big confirmation that Google is doubling down on audiences because now you can check on whether ads are showing for your specific audiences. Here’s what it looks like in the tool:

As you can see it’s just another drop-down box, but it allows you to pick any audience that’s already in your account. That includes your remarketing lists, similar audiences and combination audiences. If you think about it for a few minutes, there are a few ideas here that rise to the top:

Test your bid modifiers

I’ve often wondered how much I need to increase my bid modifiers on key audiences. This tool basically allows you to test those bid increases. Just increase a bid, set the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool to the desired audiences and see how much you’ve managed to increase position. Not an end-all, be-all but a rough estimate of the effect you’re going to see.

Similar Audiences

This one is interesting to me because I don’t yet trust Similar Audiences from Google. Here I could at least see how my bids are stacking up for these people.

New audience testing

This could let you see how you’d stack up in auctions with very specific audiences. For high CPC keywords and limited budgets, this could really help you sniff out audiences where your bid can be competitive without breaking the bank. You can create an audience in Google Ads and test it out without even spending any money (if you quickly paused the stuff you created to target the audience, because you need a live campaign/ad group/keyword to get the full benefit of the tool)

Make Edits Right In The Tool

This is one of those moves that seems like a no-brainer, but it hasn’t been there until now. You can now take action to fix issues right in the tool instead of having to leave and remember the campaign/ad group/keyword that needed to be changed (or make the adjustment in Editor, which is how I worked around things).

Here’s what it looks like:


Right now it’s limited to just raising budgets, but I’m sure we’ll see additional options coming. Increasing bids on keywords seems logical as well as adding a different match type (Google will probably suggest broad if they follow previous patterns). This is a helpful addition and makes it easier for advertisers to not only see what their ad is doing but do something about it when it’s not showing.

One More Idea I’d Like To See

I would like to see a drop-down box for day/time. I’ve got bid modifiers for days and times on many campaigns. Right now the tool operates in “real time”, so if I want to see how my East Coast client’s ads are doing at 9am I need to be using the tool at 7am in my time zone. Not a huge deal, but while you’re making improvements Google, how about this one?

What do you think about these new Ad Preview & Diagnosis features? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.