Getting my ad to show up for miscellaneous searches.

where I don't specify the exact search

[beren]

One keyword generates over 85% of the clicks on the account. I would like the ad to show up for searches on “keyword banana” where banana represents a nonsense word(s), unrelated to the keyword, that no one would explicitly specify in their AdWords campaign. So I would like my ad to show up for all instances of searches with the keyword.

How do I do this? Last year I e-mailed AdWords support and they advised me to change my listing from broad match to exact match so that the combination with “banana” (I used that example) would work. I changed it so it now says [keyword] in the account.

This works for affiliate sites but not for Google. A search for “keyword nonsense1 nonsense2” on AOL or AskJeeves brings up my ad and the ads of my competitors. But a search on Google does not bring up my ad or my competitors’. It brings up ads for these AdSense arbitrage sites – you know, these one- or two-page sites with minimal content and AdSense ads. These sites pay $0.05 for an AdWords click and hope visitors will click on their more expensive AdSense ads so they can profit from the spread.

What are these arbitrage sites doing that I am not doing and my real competitors are not doing? I doubt any of the real players in this market are paying less than $1/click, so it seems that Google would prefer to have the real advertisers showing up directly on the Google results page rather than having users pay only $0.05 to go through AdSense sites.

It seems like AdWords support gave me the wrong advice last year, but that is what they said. I would post their e-mail, but that's against webmasterworld.com rules.

[FromRocky]

What are these arbitrage sites doing that I am not doing and my real competitors are not doing?

That's one of secrets. You need to figure it out.

[mykel79]

According to Adword help:
Broad match. Simply enter your keyword(s), such as tennis shoes
Your ad will show when users search on the keywords tennis and shoes, in any order, and even if the query includes other terms, such as tennis rackets and shoes

Isn't that exactly what you want?

[howiejs]

same issues here is it a timing thing -- where he ads need to prove themselve in exact match first

[howiejs]

google also sent me a templated reply on this

any other suggestions

[FromRocky]

howiejs & beren,
Have you gotten any impression for these keywords?

[UpDown]

Either phrase match ("keyword") or broad match (keyword) should show your ad in Google for a search on (keyword banana). I would suggest you try all three options so that your ad appears as often as possible:

[keyword]
"keyword"
keyword

[howiejs]

Google replied that the keyword needs to run through 1000 impressions before broad matching really works

This is tough for an expensive keyword that you want to bid low on - with the hope of hitting many of the broad matches