How does it work exactly? Here's my situation. I have foreign keywords for some ads, but I do not show them in the countries the language belongs to. For instance, I have keywords in Chinese but I didn't select China to show my ads in. Yet I still have my ads shown in the searches and the cost per click is usually lower compared to English keywords. Chinese speaking people searching in other countries? (Also, this is for the DP forum moderators. I couldn't post a message using Chrome. The text area didn't let me type. I don't know if it's related to the new Captcha you are using or what. I am posting this using Firefox now)
When you use Google to perform a search, by default, the language is that of the country you are in. So if you use google.com, your default language is English, google.fr would be French and so on. Knowing your language, Google will search the proper database for your keywords and give you results from that language. You can specify other languages in the preferences. You can even choose many languages. For example, I choose English and French so I can search in either language. I assume many in the US choose English and Spanish. In those cases, Google will search the databases of each language you choose. It will then return results it finds as well as ads it finds which targeted those languages. So the answer to your question is, yes, Chinese people in the countries you are targeting are doing searches in Chinese and triggering your ads. On the Adwords side, one of your settings is the languages you want to display your ads to (target audience section in a campaign's settings) and location which normally would match (China and Chinese language). Normally, you'd choose one language - I think most of us choose English - but you can choose any language and even multiple languages. Doing so is a mistake, you should create a separate campaign for each language. However, you want to target people in China who speak English. Simply select China as one of the countries. If a Chinese has their Google settings to Chinese and English, and types in a search in English using your keywords, your ad will be shown. Costs will differ sometimes by quite a lot between countries. Normal since your competition is totally different.
As Lucid said, if you select a Chinese keyword and select USA as a target: if someone is in USA and types in that keyword in Chinese, only then your ad will be shown. The most common use of this I guess is an english keyword, targeting people outside of native english speaking countries. For instance the word "adwords success" in Germany. A German would need to enter that phrase in english then, indicating that he speaks the language, and you can reach him that way.
Using foreign keywords have shown me that there are a lot, and I mean a lot of people in other countries using foreign/native languages to look for jobs. It's kind of weird. And I do not believe it's the case. I actually think that Google makes some words equally searchable (in some cases) and that's why I, for one, get so many clicks using foreign keywords. An example would be: part time baan (used by the dutch) and part time jobb (used be the swedish) can be taken as a typo and be shown to anyone who types something close to that. The polish prace or praca (work) gets and enormous amounts of clicks in quite a few countries. I think it is simply being taken for another misspelled word. At least I am guessing that this is what is happening.
I'll bet you are using broad matched keywords. If the dutch use part time baan, the only non-English looking word is baan and Google probably expands that to something else giving you impressions and maybe even unwanted clicks. The search query report may be an eye opener for you on what kind of queries you're getting clicks from.
Lucid, I should do that, but I have not gotten to that yet. There's so much I do not know yet! But... when I search those terms using Google.com the searches do bring job ads. I have no clue what those searches bring in other countries that use various search engines. I hope it is the same. I guess my whole point is this, why in the world somebody in Poland would want to find new jobs in South Africa? Unless something is misspelled I can't see the reason why 100 people a day there want to go to South Africa to work (and in some cases vise versa). Maybe some students in the coffee shops browsing the Web, clicking the ads for no reason?
> why in the world somebody in Poland would want to find new jobs in South Africa? One reason seems obvious to me, and probably the main reason, some people in Poland are thinking of moving to South Africa. More opportunities there. Some know they are moving there, a man on a special construction project for example, his spouse wanting a job there too. I don't see what's so strange about it. There's lots of people in Poland. Some are looking for jobs elsewhere. But, and I sound like a broken record, you may not be getting quality impressions simply because of the broad-matched keywords you are using. That to me is probably your biggest problem from our conversations.
Lucid, I finally got rid of all foreign keywords. After several tries I didn't see much of an increase in the revenue. They are cheap, but not as profitable. The Portuguese keywords were the only ones that I though were doing something good. Anyway. I am back to the English keywords and I see an immediate increase in the time the visitors are spending on the pages and as a result I see a hire revenue generated. Also, I turned off the content network and increased my bid. I seem to be doing much better now.