Sooner or later every advertiser wants to see their ad the way a customer would. Maybe the boss wants proof the campaign is live, a client needs to approve copy before launch, or you are training a new team member on paid search. This page used to host our own mock-up tool for exactly that. This guide covers the two ways to do it now: checking a live ad with Google's own preview tool, and mocking up an ad before it exists.
Why you should not just search for your ad
Searching for your own ads on Google is tempting, and it causes problems. Each search where your ad appears and you don't click counts as an impression. Do it often and your click-through rate drops, which can feed into Quality Score and the price you pay per click. You may also not see the ad at all, because budget pacing, bids, location and your own search history all affect what shows.
Check live ads with Ad Preview and Diagnosis
Google Ads has a built-in tool for this, called Ad Preview and Diagnosis. You find it in the Tools menu of your Google Ads account, under troubleshooting. Enter a search term and choose the location, language and device you want to test. The tool shows the results page as a searcher in that setting would see it, without recording an impression or a click.
If your ad does not appear, the tool tells you why. Common reasons are a budget that has run out for the day, a bid too low to show, ads still under review or targeting that excludes the location you picked. That makes it the first place to look when someone says "I can't see our ads".
Mock up an ad before it goes live
Ad Preview only works for ads that already exist. For new copy, a mock-up is faster. Inside Google Ads the ad editor shows a live preview as you type. For client sign-off, many teams simply lay out the ad in a document or slide using the same structure Google uses:
- Headlines, up to 30 characters each. A responsive search ad can hold up to 15, and Google shows two or three at a time.
- Descriptions, up to 90 characters each, with up to four per ad.
- The display path, two fields of up to 15 characters added to your domain.
- Assets, which Google used to call extensions: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, prices, promotions, call and location details, and app links.
Our old tool let you fill in all of these and see a desktop and mobile version side by side. The same discipline still works on paper. Write every headline so it makes sense next to any other, keep the most important message in the first headline and check that sitelinks point to pages that match their text.
What a preview cannot promise
A mock-up shows what an ad could look like, not what Google will serve. Google picks the combination of headlines, descriptions and assets it expects to perform best for each search, device and position. Some assets will show only some of the time, and in some auctions none will. Judge your copy by the combinations Google reports as served, not by the version you liked in the mock-up.
If you want help writing and testing search ads or reviewing a Google Ads account, our team can take a look.
