During all the hubbub last week about Googles quality score changes, I discovered a tool within that engine thats really helpful for keeping tabs on how well your keywords and their ads are working. Its something relatively new called the “Ads Diagnostic Tool,” and you can find it next to the status column on your ad group pages within your campaigns.

Just hover your cursor over the magnifying glass next to each of your key terms, and a pop-up window will load that actually gives you quite a bit of information, including:

• whether or not an ad is showing for that
  term
• whether or not its ranking high enough to be displayed on the first search-results page
• the settings youve selected for that key term, including display language and target location

If a term isnt working—or you see youve made a mistake in your settings—this tool makes it easy to see so all in one place, and then quickly make changes by ad group.

If your ads arent showing on the first page of search results, you can click on an “Ad Diagnostic Tool” link in that same pop-up window. This will help you find out why your ads arent showing and give you possible solutions. (You can check terms either by ad or by the URL of the search terms page where you believe it should be displayed, whichever youd like.)

Knowing the status of a key term is important; but being able to see how well that term is working (or not!) is even more important. The ads diagnostic tool gives you all that information in one quick glance.

So…how well are your terms and ads working? Check out the ads diagnostic tool and find out!