How is my AdWords account performing?

The first, and easiest way to measure your success is to review your AdWords statistics. Success with AdWords will be different for every business and will depend on your business goals. However, there are a few things to look out for that will indicate your ads are running successfully:

Impressions

The number of impressions tells you how many times your ad has been displayed to your potential customers. A high number of impressions means your ad has been seen a lot but is not necessarily a measure of your account effectiveness. You need to review this in relation to your clicks (how many people have clicked on your ad) to understand your ad's relevance to your audience. This is easily done by looking at your clickthrough rate (CTR).

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

To get an immediate idea of how well a campaign is doing, check the CTR – how often people click on your ad after seeing it. As a rule of thumb, a CTR on Google under 1% indicates your ads are not targeted to a relevant audience. Look at this on the 'Campaigns' tab and view the CTR of your individual keywords and ads on the respective tabs.

Average Position

Check the Avg. Pos. column on the 'Campaigns' tab in your account to find out where your ad is appearing on the search results page. There are up to 11 ads shown on any search page so if your average position is 11 or more your ad is, on average, not appearing on the first page of search results. You should aim to show your ad on the first page of search results so your potential customers can more easily find your ad.

First Page Bids

If your ad is not appearing on the first page of search results, you will see first page bids on the 'Keywords' tab under the 'Status' column. High bid estimates can indicate that your keywords or ads are not as relevant as they could be.

Quality Score

Each of your keywords is given a quality score which can be found by clicking on the icon in the 'Status' column on the 'Keywords' tab. A keyword's quality score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance.

In general, a high quality score of 9 or 10 means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC). Quality score looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad, and to a user's search query.

If you would like to improve these metrics, we suggest optimizing your account using our Optimization Tips.