Rehan - 5:11 pm on Apr 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

Recently I was bidding for "green widgets" and my ad ranked 5th or 6th for the search "green shiny widgets". Once I added "green shiny widgets" to my keywords with the same max bid, my ad moved up to 3rd spot. So in my experience, the long tail keyword has a better quality score for the search targeted by that keyword and consequently it results in a better position and/or lower CPC.

Also, phrase match and broad match don't extend to all variations of the keywords. For example, just because an ad appears for "green widgets" doesn't necessarily mean it will appear for "used green widgets"... That's another reason to specify the long tail terms explicitly.

[edited by: Rehan at 5:12 pm (utc) on April 11, 2007]