TL;DR: A new ad group with no traffic usually falls into one of two groups. Either Google isn’t showing your ads (an approval, status, search volume, budget or bid problem), or it is showing them, and nobody is clicking (a relevance, ad copy or targeting problem). Check your impressions first, then the status column, before you change anything.
A new ad group that gets little or no traffic is hard to read. Something may be broken, or the ads may simply not have had long enough. The fastest way to tell is to work out which kind of “no traffic” you have, then check the causes that fit.
Start with impressions: are your ads not showing, or not being clicked?
In Google Ads, “no traffic” can mean two different things, and the fixes are different.
- No impressions: Google isn’t showing your ads at all. Look at eligibility, search volume, budget and bids.
- Impressions but no clicks: your ads are showing, but people aren’t choosing them. Look at relevance, ad copy, competition and targeting.
Add the impressions column to your ad group view and set the date range to the time since launch. The sections below follow that split.
If there are no impressions, check the status first
Start with billing. Google’s own troubleshooter for ads that aren’t showing begins by asking whether billing details have been entered and whether a card has been declined. Then look at the status of the campaign, ad group, ad and each keyword. Hover over the speech bubble next to an ad’s status and Google explains what it means.
These are the statuses worth checking first.
| Where | Status | What it means | What to do |
| Ad | Under review | Google checks every new ad before it runs. Most reviews finish within one working day. | If it is still under review after two full working days, check the ad’s status. After a week, contact Google Ads Support. |
| Ad | Disapproved | The ad can’t show anywhere. | See the policy paragraph below the table. |
| Campaign | Paused, Pending or Ended | Paused means it isn’t running. Pending means the start date is in the future. Ended means the end date has passed. Google’s campaign status definitions cover each. | Resume the campaign or correct the dates. |
| Ad group | Paused or Removed | Keywords inside it show as Not eligible. | Re-enable the ad group. |
| Keyword | Eligible (limited): Low search volume | The keyword is linked to very little search traffic, so it isn’t shown often. | Find higher-volume keywords (see the search volume section below). |
| Keyword | Eligible (limited): Rarely shown due to low Quality Score | Google says the keyword isn’t showing ads often because of a low Quality Score. | Improve ad relevance, landing page experience and expected click-through rate, or replace the keyword. |
| Campaign | Limited by budget | The campaign can show ads, but not as often as it could because of budget. | See the budget section below. |
The keyword rows come from Google’s keyword status guide.
When a new ad group has no impressions, I’d first check keyword eligibility, search volume and match types to see if keywords are too restrictive or flagged as low search volume. I’d also check for any ad disapprovals, negative keyword conflicts, campaign budget or bidding restrictions, and whether the campaign and ad group are enabled. The most common issue is usually low search volume or keywords being too specific, meaning there simply isn’t enough search demand to trigger the ads. – Alex Hickling, PPC Account Manager
If an ad is disapproved, it won’t show until the problem is dealt with. Google can disapprove ads that break its advertising policies and can suspend accounts for repeat or serious violations. Open the Policy Manager to see the issue, then fix the ad or appeal the decision. Editing an ad restarts its review, so make all your fixes before you resubmit it.
Top Tip: Don’t check whether your ad is showing by searching for it on Google. Searching can add impressions to your account without a click, which skews your stats. Use the Ad preview and diagnosis tool instead: it shows how your ad would appear and tells you why it may not be showing.
Check whether people search for your keywords often enough
If a keyword’s status says low search volume, Google is telling you very few people search for it, so it won’t be shown often. Keyword Planner shows estimated monthly searches, but it can’t discover or forecast keywords with very low volumes. A keyword that doesn’t appear in it may be too niche to bring traffic on its own.
Google’s suggested fix is to look for higher-volume keywords in Keyword Planner and to consider phrase or broad match for low-volume ones. Long-tail keywords usually have lower search volume, so an ad group built entirely from them can be very quiet. A common approach is to mix a few broader terms with the specific ones, and to check each broader term still matches what you sell.
Check your budget, bids and bidding strategy
Budget is set per campaign, so a new ad group shares it with every other ad group in that campaign. Google says spend on a single day can reach twice the average daily budget for most campaigns, with a monthly limit of 30.4 times the daily average. If the campaign status says Limited by budget, your ads are running, but less often than they could.
Bids matter too. Whether an ad is eligible to show, and where it appears, depends on its Ad Rank, and, generally, the advertiser with the highest Ad Rank takes the top position. Your bid is one of several Ad Rank factors, alongside ad and landing page quality. A bid well below what competitors are paying for the same search can leave a new ad group with few impressions. Our guide to search advertising explains how bids and the auction fit together.
If you use an automated bid strategy, Google says a new or changed strategy goes through a learning period that can take up to around 50 conversion events or three conversion cycles. Manual CPC bidding has no learning period. Changing a strategy setting can trigger the learning status again, so we’d avoid repeated tweaks while you wait for data. Google’s page doesn’t say how learning affects how often ads show, so treat it as a reason to be patient with settings, not as a confirmed cause of low traffic.
For a financial services client, we set up a display ad group to retarget website visitors, but it recorded no impressions.
The usual checks found nothing. Budget was fine, the creative was approved, the campaign was live. The problem was the audience. The membership window we’d set was too short, so the list simply wasn’t big enough for Google to serve against. Display needs a minimum number of active users in an audience before it will deliver anything, and we were sitting under it.
We extended the lookback window, which brought enough people into the list to clear the threshold, and delivery started shortly after.
It’s an easy one to miss, because nothing in the account looks broken. The ad group is enabled, the ads are approved, and Google doesn’t flag the audience as the reason. If a retargeting ad group isn’t serving, check the list size before anything else.
Check your targeting and schedule
Review your location, language, audience and device settings, and your ad schedule. These are easy to set too tightly by accident, and an ad group aimed at the wrong area or the wrong hours can get very few impressions even if the keywords are strong. Widen one setting at a time so you can see what made the difference.
If there are impressions but no clicks
When ads show but don’t get clicked, the problem is more likely the message than the settings. We’d start by checking that the keyword, the ad and the landing page all say the same thing. Someone searching for a sports therapist who sees an ad written for chiropractors has no reason to click.
Then look at the ad itself. Does it say what you offer, who it is for and what to do next? Benefit-led copy with a clear call to action gives people a reason to click, and Google lists the expected impact of ad assets, such as sitelinks, as one of the Ad Rank factors, so add them where they are relevant.
If the ad and targeting are sound, competitors may simply be outranking you for the same searches. A more specific keyword, a more relevant ad or a higher bid can all help, but change one thing at a time.
What Quality Score can and can’t tell you
Quality Score is a diagnostic that Google reports for each keyword on a scale of 1 to 10. It is based on three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience, and each one is rated above average, average or below average. Google says Quality Score isn’t an input in the ad auction and isn’t something to optimise for in its own right.
Ad quality does matter, though. It is one of the factors in Ad Rank, and Google says higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click. So don’t chase the number. Use the three component ratings to see what to fix: if expected click-through rate is below average, look at whether the ad gives people a clear reason to click; if ad relevance is below average, tighten the link between keyword and ad; if landing page experience is below average, look at the page.
Does a low Quality Score stop my ads showing?
Google says the Quality Score number isn’t an input in the ad auction, although the ad quality behind it does feed into Ad Rank. Google also uses a keyword status called Rarely shown due to low Quality Score for keywords it isn’t showing often. We read that as a prompt to fix ad relevance, landing page experience and expected click-through rate, or to swap the keyword for a more relevant one.
How Wildcat Handles This
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on an ad group that isn’t performing, start with a free consultation. We’ll get to know your business first. If we work together, your dedicated account manager spends a set-up month auditing your account in detail before campaigns go live with your approval, and if performance is lower than expected afterwards, you’ll hear it from us first, alongside a solution we plan to implement. You can see how that works on our PPC page, or book a free consultation.
Tom Brookes
PPC Executive
