We get it. You’re spending money on Google Ads, and you want to make sure your ads are actually showing. So you type your keywords into Google, scroll through the results, and look for your listing. Maybe you do it once. Maybe you do it ten times a day. It feels like quality control… but it might be doing more harm than good.
Before we get into why, let’s cover how Google Ads actually works behind the scenes.
How Google Decides What You Pay (and When You Show)
When you run a Google Ads campaign, your ad enters into an auction every time someone searches for a keyword you’re targeting. Whether your ad shows up—and how much you pay for a click—is based on a few key factors. Here’s the simplified version:
1. Quality Score
When your ad is new, Google gives it a default Quality Score based on the average performance of that keyword across the platform. From there, your individual score adjusts based on your own ad’s performance.
2. Your Ad’s Performance Over Time
Google watches what happens when people see your ad:
- Do they click it?
- Do they click and stay on your site?
- Do they bounce back to Google right away?
Google wants to show ads that are useful. If your ad gets ignored (or if people leave your site quickly) Google assumes it’s not a good match for that keyword. That hurts your Quality Score, which directly affects how often your ad shows and how much you pay per click.
3. Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score
Google uses this formula to determine your ad’s position:
Ad Rank = Your bid × Your Quality Score
This is where it gets important: the top spots on the search results page are super competitive. A small change in your Quality Score (or even a slight drop in your click-through rate (CTR) ) can knock you from position 1 to position 7, for example.
In local markets, the difference between those positions often comes down to fractions. So when you accidentally damage your CTR by obsessively searching and not clicking, you might tank your ranking… even though your ad and website are solid.
Big Budgets vs. Small Budgets
If you’re running a massive campaign with tens of thousands of impressions a day, your habit of Googling yourself probably won’t move the needle. Even if you search ten times a day, that’s only 300 impressions a month. If your campaign gets 400,000 impressions per month, that’s barely a fraction of a percent.
But here’s the catch: most local businesses aren’t running big-budget campaigns. More often than not, you’re working with something like a $20/day budget (about $600/mo.) With a cost-per-click (CPC) between $5 and $10, that budget typically gives you about 2 to 4 clicks per day.
Using a rough rule of thumb that it takes about 50 impressions to earn a click, a small campaign with a $20/day budget is probably generating 2 to 4 clicks per day. That works out to around 100 to 200 impressions per day, or 3,000 to 6,000 impressions per month, depending on your cost-per-click.
That’s not a lot. And if you’re Googling yourself hundreds of times a month? Yeah, now you’re skewing the numbers in a way that actually matters.
Real-World Example: Curiosity Got Expensive
We had a client in the environmental cleanup industry who fell into this exact trap. He wanted to make sure his ad was showing at all hours, so he obsessively searched for his keywords—sometimes dozens of times a day. Within just a few weeks, his cost-per-click went from about $12 to over $25.
What happened?
To Google, it looked like people were seeing the ad and choosing not to click. But in reality, it was just the client refreshing search results over and over. All those extra impressions, with no clicks, caused his CTR to drop. That led to a lower Quality Score, which directly affected his CPC—and not in a good way.
So not only did he waste a lot of time, but he also doubled his ad costs and potentially dropped his ranking—just from trying to keep tabs on his own campaign.
What Impacts Your Ad’s Performance?
If you’re wondering what really affects how your ad performs (and how much it costs), here’s a quick breakdown:
Key Factors That Influence Ad Relevance and CPC:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The ratio of people who see your ad and actually click. A low CTR is a red flag to Google. - Ad Relevance
How closely your ad matches what the searcher was looking for. - Landing Page Experience
Is your website fast, helpful, and relevant to what your ad promised? - Quality Score
Google’s 1–10 rating of your ad based on CTR, relevance, and landing page quality. - Bid Amount
How much you’re willing to pay per click. But remember, money alone won’t win if your Quality Score is low. - Competition Level
Some industries have higher CPCs simply because more advertisers are fighting for the same terms. - User Behavior Signals
Google looks at things like time on site, bounce rate, and whether the searcher comes back afterward. - Device and Location Targeting
Who you’re targeting and where they’re searching from can affect your results and your cost.
A Smarter Way to Stay Informed
The good news? You don’t need to manually search to know your ad is showing. Google gives you real tools for this, like the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool. If you’re working with a marketing agency, you should also have access to reports that show impressions, clicks, CPC, and more.
At Prospect Genius, for example, we offer 24/7 access to your ad data through an online portal. You can see exactly how your campaign is performing, without accidentally wrecking it.
The Takeaway
Googling your own ads might feel like you’re keeping tabs on your campaign, but it’s a risky habit—especially for smaller budgets. You can hurt your performance, damage your rankings, and drive up your costs without even realizing it.
Instead, use the tools and reports available to you. Trust the data. And if you have questions, your marketing partner should be happy to walk you through it.
After all, Google Ads is an investment—and a little discipline goes a long way toward making sure that investment pays off.
