Let’s not beat around the bush…if you use AdWords, you Google to see if, how, and where your ad comes up. Don’t worry, everyone does it.

While you know better than to click, did you know that simply by searching you’re still skewing your results? That’s right, your impressions! So even though you don’t click, you’re actually decreasing your CTR (click thru rate) by increasing impressions.

How can you stop skewing your results? Google was kind enough to create a tool for that: Ad Preview.

It looks similar to the Google search results, but doesn’t count as a conventional search.

Notice that you can also set your location to test how results change based on geographic location.

Nicki Hicks
Stop Skewing