I thought if you had a high quality score, your minimum bid is lowered? For every keyword in my campaign I have a Great QS with 98% of them having a 10/10. Why, then, am I paying the same amount as a test campaign in another account with only an OK QS? Also I notice that some of the keywords indicate the minimum bids aren't high enough for the first page, yet when I do a search the ads are found, often within the top 3 spots. Does anyone else notice this?
if your QS is quite high and still your min bid amount is not lowered then it means that the keyword you are bidding on is highly competitive. as far as you second problem is concerned, i too have noticed the similar things in my campaigns but i don't know the reason.
The 1st Page Bid Estimate is improving (slowly!). When first introduced it was appallingly unreliable whereas now it is only wrong about 50% of the time. Personally, I totally ignore it and base my bids on the actual results seen. But, are you getting the same results, e.g. average position, impression share?
I have noticed this... it is bizarre.. sometimes a bad quality score gets put in the top 3 ads... av pos = 2.1, whereas a good quality score with higher paying keywords have av pos= 7.8 ??? Hmm.
I noticed the bid for my keywords drop after about 3 months of running the campaign. Went from $1.40's to the $0.70's. The keyword scores are between 5 and 8.