Hi Guys, Please accept my apologies if this is a dumb newbie question though I would really appreciate your input. I run an online sunglasses store www.pretavoir.co.uk and administer my own ppc campaign. An example campaign is for Prada Sunglasses. I have a long list of terms on which I bid. However the most popular search is for 'prada sunglasses' or phrase with these words within. I have this (prada sunglasses) as an exact match, phrase match and modified broad match. If we assume that all three have a QS of 7/10 and convert fairly evenly what is the thinking behind how much I should bid on each. Should I bid most for phrase, less for modified broad and least of all for exact. And is this due to the dynamic nature of the quality score calculation ie when googled keyword is prada sunglasses then the exact match is most closely mathed and given a slightly higher QS. Anyway would really appreciate your thoughts.
Look at it this way. You say your keywords are converting. So you pay whatever makes sense - as little as you can to make as much profit as possible. Obviously, for broad match terms you will inevitably get clicks from unwanted keywords - so you may want to bid less on broad match. Of course, you have to regularly update your negative keyword list as well. You will tend to bid more on the phrase, and even more on the exact terms that bring you money (because you want to ensure a higher ad rank) Ans so on... But always consider the profitability of the keywords. If increasing your bid results in a better position and more conversions by all means increase your bids. Run a search term report and analyse it. That would probably tell you what you need to know.
Great, that makes sense. In general terms broad gets least bid, then phrase, then mod broad and then most for exact...
> keyword is prada sunglasses then the exact match is most closely mathed and given a slightly higher QS Doesn't work that way. All keyword match types are treated the same. The following list are the same keyword and would get the same QS: prada sunglasses +prada +sunglasses "prada sunglasses" [prada sunglasses]
Thanks for that . I see what you mean. Does that not contracdict Googles concept of returning most closely matched, therefore exact could have higher QS if only 7.3 for example. Another concept f you split the foutr match types into four ad groups with four different ads and therefore four different ctrs then QS could/would be different? To recap what Ian said, exact should have highest bid of all, but even then bid price should be related to return?
PPC seems to be getting so complicated nowadays, I'd suggest you generate some organic traffic instead
How does it contradict the concept? It's two different things. Ad triggering order based on match type has nothing to do with QS. I agree however that technically, each different keyword should have it's own QS. I suspect that Google does this because the calculation would be more complicated requiring more computing resources. If you split the keywords match types into different groups, yes, they would have their own QS, possibly different. That's the definition of QS: it's calculated at the keyword-ad level not just the keyword level. If you change the ad in a group (with all match types), each match type of a keyword has the same QS because that's the way it's calculated. But if you have those same keywords in different groups, you've just changed the parameters. It's not the same ads, even if you copy the ad exactly, the system sees it as a different ad. It will have different QS since it will have different CTR.
The point is with exact match you know more or less what you are paying for. So you can confidently put a certain amount on it to ensure you have a higher ad rank. With broad match you never know, for example someone may broad match 'prada glasses uk' . Now the person may be selling prescription glasses and their ad will show for 'prada glasses uk'. Someone clicks on the ad. If their landing page doesn't sell prada glasses they will have paid for a click that made them no money. The same happens if someone searches for 'sun glasses'. If you are selling expensive designer sunglasses, not every one will be willing to pay your prices so again you lose money. So obviously you may want to put less money on broad match terms if you want to go that way. You are asking if the price should be related to return. I'm not sure if I'm getting your question. You are running a business. You want to spend as little as you can to get as much profit as you can. There is a bid - bid too much with low QS and you lose. You bid too little - you're out of the game. Or am I missing something?
Ian How about this scenario four adgroups all with same ads (ok quite pointless but bear with me) one keyword in each group as follows Grp 1 "prada sunglasses" Grp 2 [prada sunglasses] Grp 3 +prada +sunglasses Grp 4 prada sunglasses So, there is a phrase, exact, modified broad and broad. All have QS 7/10. I set bid at 35p which is shown higher and which costs least if clicked? You can assume that this is for an instant in time ie you can discount changes in competitors bid strategies, time of day etc. I am interested as to how the different match types compete with each other when each matches the searched term
The QS for the keywords in each ad group will change over time. I don't think the match type will affect the order in which the ads will show. Adwords may rotate ads within an ad group according to performance but not within your campaign or account. The cost will be determined according to your quality score and the ad rank of the competitor below you. In other words, you can't get a definite answer before your ads are shown. Why don't you just try to see what happens after a week? Sean to be honest, some of us get paid to answer this type of questions. The forum is meant to be helpful but I think you are over doing it a bit. I don't mean to be rude but if you are asking so many questions before making a move you should either spend some time learning PPC or hire someone to do it for you. The forum is here to help with particular problems not to guide you through your campaign.
The precedence is not QS but the match type. In your scenario, Google will check first if you have an exact match to the query. So if someone searches for "prada sunglasses", your exact match will fire. Now, I know it probably won't fire 100% every time there's such a search. There are surely some other variables that effect that. But for all practical purposes, your exact match should fire, if you have one. Otherwise, it looks for an existing phrase match. If not, the last one is broad match. I don't know the precedence between regular broad and modified broad. I suspect modified broad gets precedence. At this point, QS and bid have nothing to do with it. Simply match type precedence. Once the system finds the appropriate keyword, you are ranked using QS times bid. If you had the same keyword (and same match type) in different groups, the precedence would be the one with the higher QS times bid. There is some sort of "rotation" among ads, whether they are in the same group or not. This to give all ads a chance, otherwise, some ads would never be shown. Further complicating things are your Rotate/Optimize settings at the campaign level as well as other settings. FWIW, I don't see any reason to split groups along match types.
Thanks Guys. Ian I have been running my campaign for a year now, and haven't beena ble to work out from my data what I'm asking you in a theoretical sense. I dont think youre rude, just pointing out to leave the job to the experts as Im the site owner not a ppc guy (as you've worked out) Lucid Thanks for your repsonse. Much appreciated
I am finding it hard to show up for my keywords no matter how high I bid. At first my campaign was doing well and I was showing up even in the premium spots, and now hardly any of my ads show up. Can you help? Nina
Nina I have experienced this problem in the past. There could be a variety of issues which are interlinked. However, first of all take hover over the speech bubble in the status column of your campaign. Here you will be given information including quality score and whether your ad is showing, and if not which of the following 1. keyword relevance, 2.landing page quality and 3. landing page load time. it will also give you information such as your bid being too low, etc. Take a look at your quality score. If it is low eg lower 6 then you will probably have to pay more than expected to reach top 5 positions in sponsored results. Therefore take a look at your ads, keywords and landing page quality as a combination. Perhaps split your list of keywords into smaller adgroups and write ads which are relevant to the keywords and include the keywords in your ad if possible. Next make sure to specify your destination url as a keyword relevant page eg if you are bidding on search term 'epson printer repairs' include this in your ad text and then direct your customers through to your epson printers repairs page, NOT your homepage. If all of the above has been attended to, then perhaps your budget is too low. There are lots of great stats that your adwords dashboard can show you such as impressions received/lost, quality score, average position,etc. it is worth playing around with these and get a feel for how your campaign flows. Remember that you may get your ads to show this week, but things can change especially your competitors bid price, therefore keep an eye on your campaign and change if necessary. One last point is that if you are checking your ad position either log into your google adwords account or use the google adwords preview tool. Don't just use regular google search for your keywords as this will create an impression and unless you click on it then this will lower your click through rate and damage your position. I hope I haven't given any duff advice here, hopefully one of the other guys will check my post.Good Luck!
Thank you Sean for your detailed advice. All of my quality scores are ok - lowest is 6. When I hover over the speech bubble the message that I get is that that the rank is not high enough to be shown on the first page. I guess that just means I have to increase my bid. But its strange because the previous week I received twice as many impressions and a lower average cpc. Then all of a sudden something changed and my impressions halved - even when I tried to increase the bid price. This mainly happens when I try to add new ad groups. I always add very small groups and have no duplicate keywords. But the main problem that happens is that an ad from another group gets triggered for a keyword in a different group - and then my whole campaign goes haywire - impressions drop, click prices need to go up, etc. Has this happened to you?