If I post an ad for say, "Astronaut Moon" (I always thought widgets were daft)
The default setting is broad match I guess (I hate details), meaning any phrases searched for containing these words will cause my ad to appear. Let's say my ad cost a dollar a click. Great - so I've got all my bases covered.
So now, what if I found that "Astronaut Moon Mars" was going for 10 cents and I set up a new ad group with these keywords and a max bid of 10 cents, but I leave the other ad running.
If someone actually searches for "Astronaut Moon Mars", which ad will be displayed? The most relevant one or the one which earns Google the highest CPC?
in our experience in Adwords (very unlike Overture), adding an extra term to a phrase does not usually reduce the cost significantly. You are still competing with others who are using broad match for ANY of those terms. So your example to me (though i know its just an example) of $1.00 vs 10c is a bit out of kilter. In other words adding a term and making the phrase "exact" or "phrase" match DOES reduce your impressions and hopefully increases your CTR by making the terms more relevant/targeted, but they DO NOT decrease costs per click. - CPC does change, sometimes a little bit up, sometimes a little bit down i think, but not in any substantial way. So there is not any incentive for Google to display your highest CPC campaigns/groups anyway as there is not much difference...
(the following min click costs are not "real' but just an example of what we have found for other phrases we work with) Your experience may differ, i guess it depends on your terms popularities.
This is because adwords min cost estimates are not based on how many people "register" for a particular term (or bid in overture) but takes into account all who want any or a combination of terms in your string, (exact, phrase or broad match regardless)
elephant africa 30c
"elephant africa" 28c
"elephant africa tusks" 33c
[elephant africa tusks] 32c
elephant india 35c
"elephant india" 35c
The more specific you can make it the higher up the listings you should appear, so your CTR should be higher and therfore the CPC should be lower to be in a higher position.
All things being equal Adwords is designed a bit like a handicap race in horse racing. The best result for Google is a dead-heat between all advertisers.
If you have £1000 budget and are prepared to spend it £1.00 at a time, they will deliver traffic to that effect.
If you are not very good at writing ads, then they will charge you more for occupying the space that they could be offering to someone who writes a good ad, or offer the space to someone prepared to pay more (it's why babies get to sit on their parents lap on a plane).
ROFL.
CIML - I guess you are right. I just looked through the control panel and it confirmed what you said. If anything very specific phrases cost more.
Overture is so easy to understand. With Google you need to think of so many variables at once that it's very hard to optimize your account (to pay the minimum cpc for your daily budget).
And then if you want to temporarily up your traffic you need to optimize it all over again.
Then there are seasonal changes in web surfing behaviour....
:(
I think I'll take up gardening instead
