Bidding on non-english keywords

Spanish/french keywords

[wheel]

Anyone care to share their experiences with advertising on non-english phrases in Google?

In the niche that I'm in, the generic phrases are bidding at $10-$15 or higher for the top spot. When I search for the french or spanish equivalents, there's nary an ad to be found (a couple folks from brazil/france). Have I found an untapped area? Or is there a reason there are no ads there?

[Shak]

could current bidders be choosing only to show by language, or maybe low inventory

both wild guesses

shak

[eWhisper]

Many foreign language searches in English speaking countries are untapped areas. Other times, they're untapped because the volume just isn't there.

Although, the largest barrier seems to be that the web devs, marketers, etc, only speak one language and while translation services are available, when you want to just change some ad copy on the fly, or read over your stats, it's much more difficult when you have no idea what the keywords are.

[AmericanBulldog]

Wheel,

Make sure you are seeing the target country's ads. For example, for France, add &gl=f to the end of search query string returned and you will see the corresponding ads shown to French IP's.

[wheel]

I'm looking at alternate languages in English countries - like spanish in the U.S.

I'm suspecting eWhipser is correct about English-centric businesses. However my clients have indicated that they would consider hiring alternate language staff. And in this industry, if I get a few hundreds of clicks per month it's worth doing that.

[cline]

I've done a bit of non-English targeting for English-language sites. In general the CTRs and conversions are poor. It's worth a try, though.