Anyone understand the strangeness of GOOGLE ADWORDS?
 

In selecting keywords Google adwords seems to behave in a strange way....

Sometimes it lets you bid on a keyword for a small bid £0.05 then another keyword quite obscure it will demand a much higher bid.
eg tease stripping 0.05
Romantic sex videos 015

And yet when I type in "Romantic Sex Videos" there are no ads showing at all.... ( maybe that is just Britain?)

Even obscure word combinations are coming up with high price tags even though I can't see any competition. Using the models names brings up bids of £0.50 even our unknown in house models names like "Julia Dzwika" £0.50 again when I run a search here in the UK no other ads show.

Is it because people are bidding high in the States ?

Any help gratefully received.....

There are some great books on Adwords. Its worth stopping by your local bookstore and picking up a recent edition if you are serious about Adwords.

you can find everything you need to know about aw on the net...

the biggest thing with aw is being able to track your conversions.

some kw's may be high priced but they convert very well...

some cheap kw's convert like shit..

you can lose your ass if you dont know what is converting...


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it doesn't necessarily mean that you will pay that much, it's just an estimate... not necessarily an accurate estimate...

The pricing algorithm can be strange just like the way they index.
I know they take in account how long bidders have been bidding on a keyword as well as the relevance of the landing page factors in when the bids are set.

Its already been said. Google analytics should be your best friend when working with adwords.
The cheap keyword in most cases isnt the most profitable.

Buying a book on the subject is about as effective as hiring a self professed adwords expert like Nick3131 who bragged about how he made a motherfucking G in one day using the letters of the alphabet as his keyword source.

As Andy Dunn used to say... "Testing,testing, testing!"

I have read a book, and I did find it of interest. It does give good guidence on writing ads and getting good click through rates.... Of course, we track sales through both Google and CCBILL trackers...This helps but does not explain why Google wants to charge large amounts for obsure phrases....

Tracking helps but take a phrase like "indie erotic films" which is sort of what we do but it produces a click a week.... it will take several years to see if it converts given that we would give it 600 clicks to see if it made a sale....

Still the question bugs me why the high charges for obsure phrases?

Ask your google rep.

I'll try ....

Nearest I can tell keyword price has little to do with if anyone is either searching for the keyword or if anyone else is bidding on the word. I do know that the keywords I want are expensive, so they must see us coming from a mile away.

adwords prices are very high on some shit kwrds

Not only that but some words that you would expect to be expensive are cheap...for the last few weeks the keyword "erotic" was at the minimum price and yesterday shot up to £0.20 and the more obscure erotica from £0.05 to £0.50 ....

we went from 275 clicks a day to 4 overnight....

Was hoping for more wisdom here....

google chooses when and for what terms to serve ads
you have to deal with quality score etc etc
maybe they don't think your site relates to the keywords you are bidding on
what is your landing page quality score?

Usually your ad and landing page first get passed trough the bot to check compliance
then a bit later a reviewer will take a look. They have the ability to set your score manually and override the bot, I believe


There was a guy from Overture who said back then they would tweak their system and not show ads on cheaper keywords to drive marketers to bid on the more expensive ones

NDAs prevent specific details.

Cherry7, I'm with you. I'm a heavy Adwords user and it's baffling to try and figure out the real time pricing on key words and long tail key words. Amateur porn and all - and I mean all - of the misspells associated with it just jumped overnight a few months ago, I search and see no sponsors for those words. I bid the minimum and the hours later I'm blown out of the water. I search it and see nothing. I just don't get it. Right now- amateur cumshots: First page bid estimate: $1.00 - INSANE! Last week estimates were at 0.65.

On a fair note, I once bid on a term, spaced out for a minute and set the bid to 12.00 a click. They next day I checked my stats and disaster was avoided as they realized I meant .12 and adjusted it accordingly.


The pricing though.. Ask reps, search around and you see the same responses about being market driven, blah blah.. Very confusing. I share your pain.

I would update your website before buying any traffic. :2 cents::2 cents::2 cents::2 cents:

Hire a good SEO consultant, over the long run itll beat any campaign you can do on AW

Finding out who is a good SEO expert is the problem....

Yes, bid pricing can be baffling. It's to Google's benefit from a bid auction perspective, not to provide transparency.

I have lost my ass on adwords more than once!