I am trying to understand PPC. I have a site where some of the key words, according to google, are bid up to $9.00+ per click. Generally out of a real person's realm. If I bid .02, .05 or.10 to maintain my $25/mo budget, will my ad ever show up? In relevant places? Google suggests .25 but does not say if or where the ad will appear. What is to keep the $9/click company from hitting my ad a few hundred times, when they are not a legit buyer, to spoil my effort? Pls, no hissing the newbie!!!
Let's start with the last question first. > What is to keep the $9/click company from hitting my ad There's nothing to keep anyone from clicking your ad. Google does have safeguards to prevent click fraud and knows from the IP when someone does that. However, it's not something that I'd worry about. Any legitimate company or person is not going to spend their time clicking on competitors' ads to try and run up their budget and drive them out of business. I believe the 25 cents you speak of is the estimated bid to place on the first page. So bid at least that much and you should be somewhere on the first page. Given your very low budget, your ad will not show that often but you will have occasional impressions and hopefully clicks. The $9 per click you mention is only an estimate for the top three positions. Smart advertisers can easily beat it. I have an Adwords FAQ which will answer some of your questions in more details.