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1. • CommentAuthorsam
   • CommentTimeJul 9th 2007

    
   Hi guys,
   
   Should we be doing all 3 for our "keywords" i.e. phrase, broad and exact and bidding on each differently in order to bring down CPC for the phrase match for example?
   
   So if I am doing an exact match because of the extra competition I pay more but on phrase because of the less competition I pay lower Bid and hence a lower CPC... because I also dont agree that Google charges you penny more than the advertiser below you.. If it did then I agree that my suggestion of bidding less for "phrase" and more for "exact" would be pointless...
   
   Or am i missing something?
   
   Thanks in advance
   
   Sam
2. • CommentAuthorjoyously
   • CommentTimeJul 11th 2007

    
   You have to be real careful using broad match because it will match things you never thought of and so your ad won't appeal at all. What this does is give you impressions, but no clicks, so the CTR is low and the price goes up. Be sure to use the keyword tool to find a lot of words to use as negative match whenever you use broad match.
   
   I'm not so sure that I follow what you are saying about there being more competition using exact match versus phrase match. It would be different for each keyword probably every day. And each keyword should be tweaked to get the best price possible, whether it's exact or phrase or broad.
3. • CommentAuthorsam
   • CommentTimeJul 12th 2007

    
   Cheers Joyously...
   
   Have since tried variations of [exact], "phrase" and broad matches & its complete madness -
   
   cant work out how google do it - or what they do with it..
   
   the results are so random for different keyword searches
   
   e.g. not sure but when try diff matches not sure what is going on
   
   but on some keywords stops displaying the ads, on another makes it more expensive but the best one,
   
   which i got really excited about was a keyword when i exact matched it ..it took away the rest of the competiton...
   
   i.e. when i put and exact and phrase match to a keyword then subsequent searches to that phrase are displayed with no other advertisers because of what i did...
   
   you can imagine how excited i got and rolled it out onto other keywords but it doesnt work for others.... its crazy there is no way to figure google out... they can not beat i reckon...
   
   infact all my ads were near the top of the pages yesterday...tried exact and phrase matching last nite - not sure whether
   there is a correlation but they have since taken huge tumble to bottom page...
   
   have paused my amendments and ads still at bottom so instead increased bids by bout £6.00 and they still closer to bottom than top - is google trying to tell me something?
   
   The randomness of google.....
   
   i just dont belive that unpredictability of ads displayed is all down to adwords simply being an auction...
   
   what do yhou reckon joyously?
   
   cheers
   
   what i meant re [exact] competiotion is that most people advertise using exact match as opposed to broad/phrase hence more advertiser competition...
   
   adwords is great traffic t
4. • CommentAuthorjoyously
   • CommentTimeJul 12th 2007

    
   It's hard to tell what you tried. Was it changing your keyword from exact match to phrase match, or were you just doing a Google search with exact and phrase?
   And if you have negative keywords per campaign or just adgroup, it will affect when your ads come up. Read the Google help for more explanation, but did you know negative keywords can be broad (-free), phrase (-"mind map"), or exact (-[toy story]) ?
   
   You can use http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks to just see the ads that will show for the keyword entered. You can use the following scheme to find what type of match competitors are using :
   search for widget aldpemjgd sale
   these are the ads using broad match
   
   now search for widget sale aldpemjgd
   these are the ads using phrase match
   
   now search for "widget sale"
   these are the ads using exact match
   
   I read somewhere that phrase and broad match have a higher CTR requirement, but I'm not sure if that's still true.
   
   You can't just assume that most people advertise using exact match. I would say that only if you are Google can you even venture a guess on that. It would be different for every keyword.
   
   Be aware that when you make changes to your ads or keywords, it takes a little time to propogate that change to the various Google servers, and your statistics do have a time lag. And changing an ad affects its history, which affects its quality score, so price is affected also.
   
   One more thing... it's not necessarily best to be in ad position 1, or even 3. Some people get their best response from 4 through 8. You have to test it for your own niche and that requires some time at each spot and not changing anything else. Of course the other ads will change around you, but you can't control that.
5. • CommentAuthorsam
   • CommentTimeJul 14th 2007

    
   aaaaaaaah...it gets even more complicated...
   
   i changed from broad to [exact] & all rest of competitors vanished...
   
   i tried it on other keywords but didnt work.... i presume it only works when there are no other adertisers
   doing an exact match...
   
   i had no idea that you could do matching -ve keywords... blimmin heck
   
   
   Aaaaah the changes i make are probably why the following day everything becomes soooo costly....
   darn i guess i lose my history by messing witjh the keywords and the ads then it reduces quality score....increasing cost...
   
   but if quality score is purely adjudged by the quality score detailed in account then it doesnt really change when i play around with the account - i.e. when keyword is "great" and i make amendments then it still remains "great" bec. i check-
   
   "great" does just mean "great" right - unless there are diff levels of greatness with "great" QS
   
   i just wonder also that if tweaking accounts loses our history then isnt all this measuring and testing slightly overated...
   
   as too me google thing is sooo random, if we amend kewyords/ads
   then we lose history and risk reducing quality score and can we really actually
   test and measure everything - its tooo much of a minefield - i wonder whether we can
   get too sucked into these experts with the old testing and tweaking?
   
   what do you reckon Joyously?
   
   cheers 4 the advice
6. • CommentAuthorjoyously
   • CommentTimeJul 15th 2007 edited

    
   I didn't follow all that speculation...
   There are 2 quality scores, so don't mix them up. Go read about them at Google or on Mind Valley Labs blog or somewhere.
   
   And don't mix what I said either. If you change the *ad*, the history is lost. If you change the keyword, it's not. One of the recent blog posts on Mind Valley was about taking a great set of ad groups and moving them intact to a new account. The performance was not at all the same because of the history lost.
   
   
   Here's a quote from Google:
   "Quality Score is determined by your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR),
   relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, the quality of
   your ad's landing page, and other relevancy factors."
7. • CommentAuthorjoyously
   • CommentTimeJul 16th 2007

    
   I was reminded by a Perry Marshall email that you should always run content and search traffic under separate campaigns.
   
   Content network has a lower CTR.
   So if you were trying to split test ads or compare the statistics at all, you will be comparing apples to oranges.