This means one of two things - 1) everyone is buying the same keywords and bidding the same relative price for each, or 2) Google has basically expanded their broad match relevancy significantly, such that there is little (or no) advantage to buying tail terms, other than the possibility of created more targeted ad text.
From Google's perspective, this makes sense. If I am the only bidder on "Oelwein Widget Rates" I'll pay $.05 (well, with the quality score, maybe $.25 . . . ). But now that all the "big boys" are broad-matched into the rankings with the phrase "Widget Rates", Google can reap maybe $5 to $10 per click, and I get pushed down to ranking #45.
I have seen exceptions to this rule, i.e., places where tail terms still matter and broad-matched generic phrases aren't overwhelming the exact-match keywords. But this seems to be happening less and less frequently.
Does anyone have insight/empircal evidence?
Thanks!
[edited by: mona at 9:19 pm (utc) on Mar. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] no specific kws, please - thx! [/edit]
I don't think google have changed anything at their end, it's just that advertisers are growing in numbers. Many of the larger companies entering into the adwords space either broad match out of laziness, lack of knowledge or when they want to do some brand building.
arran.
Also over the past several months Adwords has been altering its broad match and expanded broad match algos. This has given expanded reach to advertisers who don't do good keyword research, but it has caused howls of pain from those who do, because it is causing ads to be delivered on terms that the advertiser has not targeted and does not want to target.
[edited by: eWhisper at 1:51 pm (utc) on Mar. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] URL Removed. Please don't drop links. [/edit]
Arran:
I think this is more than advertisers buying lots of tail keywords. The chances that the same advertisers bought the same keywords and bid the same amount, and that no other advertisers also bought those keywords and bid their way into the rankings, seems very unlikely. For that matter, if you type in "wefsdfwewef widget rates" you will also see the same advertisers that show up on "Oelwein" and "Chicago" widget rates.
Cline:
So if Google has expanded it's broad match algo, doesn't that mean that buying tail terms is becoming less and less important? My sense is that there is value to tail terms where Google has not yet applied their broad-matching algorithm, but for popular categories (mortgage, travel, education, ecommerce, etc) Google is slowing ramping up broad match to the point that you are almost better off buying the 100 top keywords and doing a good job on negatives rather than trying to identify tail terms.
[edited by: mona at 9:21 pm (utc) on Mar. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] specific kws [/edit]
I would not want to specify any inherent superiority to a keyword targeting strategy of identifying just the top terms and applying heavy negative matching vs a strategy of deep research to target tail terms. Depending on what strategies the competition is using, the lesser used strategy is likely to have significant advantages.
Several of the words I wanted nothing to do with, so I asked why was google making me pay for words that I had not chosen. She said that I needed to refine my adwords by using prases and neg keywords. I asked her if I was supposed to guess all of the "expanded keywords" that google ads to my campaigns. I mean if I wanted those words I would have added them myself. That makes it an extreme pain in the &^% to track ROI - or to tweak your ads.
It seems like google as been doing a lot of tweaking lately that is doing nothing but sliding money out of our pockets. While that is all well and good for investors - there comes a point when it becomes just ridiculous to steal a few dollars from those that have been giving it to you by the bucket load to begin with.
Great points about how Google seems to be very unappreciative of long time advertisers. I hate discussing anything with Google because they are always right - always!
