I am new to adwords (well, new, new as I have used adwords before but over a year ago now and I am not understanding some of the changes) I have set up a simple capaign with only a few keywords. My ads are not being shown and when I asked why was told that there were duplicate keywords. This seems to be tied up somehow with my use of "broad", "phrase" and "exact" When I used adwords before I would just select all of these for each keyword. Can anyone explain what the current situation is with selecting these? I have been emailing back and forth to the help center but after three emails from them over two weeks I can honestly say I did not understand anything they send! Except it is apparently connected to the use of broad, phrase and exact. Thanks for your help
You probably have entered some keywords of 1 and more words. If your match is set to broad, you will have a duplicate on the keywords "bicycles" and "cheap bicycles" if somebody searches "cheap bicycle". Broad match includes variations with multiple words, so you should stick to the exact match or phrase match to get back in control. Find a text-editor with macro-features like Notepad++ to prefill with ""s or []s automatically.
Separate the the keyword match types into there own adgroups. Do not put all the match types all under one adgroup