Paying to Enter a Market

does anyone do this 100% of the time...and for how long?

[exmoorbeast]

Hi

This weekend I ramped up some bids so that I was getting a large number of impressions and good CTR. Today I did what I was advised to do and lower the bids. So far it's all good.

I just wonder how successful this is for you. I realise that many of you guys do this here, but I wondered how long you will do it for. Should I have kept them artificially high for a longer period?

AWA says that you can pay less than people bidding more than you, and I also wondered if that is often the case ie does this happen all the time? I read somewhere that is 50% of the system, and I now wonder how many people run their campaigns with a heavy focus on this 50% rule?

Hope I made sense and, once again, thanks for your help.

[Shak]

AWA says that you can pay less than people bidding more than you,

either You, AWA or ME are drunk?

whats that supposed to mean

Shak

[exmoorbeast]

Ok ok, what I meant was that you can rank higher than someone that has a higher max cpc than you....

You know I am think Shak...so cut me some slack old bean.

Ok, so answer the question, and you can also answer another while you are here.

When an ad is clicked,Google passes the position of the ad that was clicked. Is there any way of retrieving this data, and if so how?

[peterdaly]

I understand the game you are trying to play. I have played it at times myself, although I have not drawn any conclusions about whether it works.

[keywordguru]

I have done this numerous times. I usually raise my bids up on specific times and days of the week. Especially turning my bids extremely low for the weekends. I have not seem any related changes while doing this other than my percentages will rise and fall accordingly.
The best way to test it is by using 2 separate ad groups, and 2 extremely related keywords. Then run the test and leave one at a respectable set budget while raising and lowering the other. You can then see if one does better in the long run.
Be sure to let us know the progress.
Thanks
KG

[steve40]

Now exmoorbeast
I know you not thick. Anything but I reckon
I do this myself and find it works for a while lowering bid price , but every so often I have to go back to the beginning and turn off for 1 day reapply high bids and then lower down bid pricesd in stages , seems to be cyclic but works if I monitor and know when to start process again ,

PS strange thing is if I up bid price slowly does not work as well

steve
just my own experience and suspect means diddly squat

[eWhisper]

Often, once we have some good CTR numbers to work from, we'll overbid to artifically raise our CTR. Once the higher position is gained (and 1000 impressions have been gathered at that CTR for the desired KWs), we can lower our CTR back to a reasonable number and often coast for a long time in the ramped up position.

With AdWords, timely overbidding can work well - just make sure you're prepared to lose that money if it doesn't work out properly. Never bid what you're not willing to pay.

[exmoorbeast]

Thanks all,

will see how we go.

The other question was about tracking ad position. I know Google has this info in the url, but I suppose it doesn't give this out? Am I correct?

I searched for Adwords Position Tracking and got only one or two companies that claimed to do it. One's software wouldn't work and the other's online service was broken.

Was I not looking in the right place, or does it now exist? How do you do it?

[edit_g]

Google will tell you when you look at the stats using your adwords login - look for 'average position'.

[exmoorbeast]

Thanks

But in my case average position is of little use to what I want to achieve.

Any other ideas?

[edit_g]

In Adwords your position can change from refresh to refresh depending on all your competitors' ctr's and cpc's and your ctr and cpc - so how can you go about getting anything but an average?