no impression = no search traffic or low max bid?

[chemoul]

Hi,
I have a large number of keywords that show 0 impressions. I am now wondering whether that's because no one searches for these keywords, or whether it is because of a my maximum bid being to low for these keywords?
The real question is: if you bid on a keyword and people search for this keyword, does google count an impression even if your keyword isn't shown (for example because of the low max bid, your ad would show up in position 30 and the user hasn't bothered going to the 3rd or 4th page of search results)? Or does Google really only count an impression when your ad appears on the screen?
If the later is the case how do you know whether a keyword has 0 impressions because there is no search volume or whether you are simply not bidding high enough?

Thanks for your help.

Steve

[Pengi]

Hi Chemoul

I think it is the latter case - impressions are only counted when your ad is actually on a displayed page. Although I'm guessing that it would still be counted even if the user needed to scroll down to see it but didn't.

I don't know how you can distinuish between zero searches and zero impressions though.

Maybe the "magnifying glass" will give you a clue "e.g. your Ad is showing but is not on the first page"

[poster_boy]

It could be that no one searches for that keyword, your bid is too low to qualify to show -or- it's actually inactive (despite being listed as 'Active') and Google simply doesn't match that keyword to queries.

Test a handful of keywords and see... sometimes, a search for the exact keyword phrase will show your ad for a broader keyword - explaining why the more detailed keyword didn't get any impressions.

It can be frustrating, especially when you're bidding on an Exact match keyword, yet a broadly-related Broad or Phrase Match keyword matches instead.

[alphasource]

i'm certain, based on behaviour i've noted on google, that an impression is only counted on your term if your ad is shown on a page. besides, otherwise it would be too easy to find out global search volumes for terms - which i'm sure is highly proprietary google info.

i have also noted that in competitive categories, like finance, impressions start showing up on popular terms only when really high bids are placed to compensate for newbie quality scores.

a few things you can do:

0. if you're getting no impressions, but a search on google for that keyword shows lots of ads, then increase your bid.

1. if you're getting no impressions and a search on the term yeilds no results on google, most likely there's no market for your search term.

2. check to see if you are geo-targeting. if applicable, national syndication will give you more impressions.

3. you may want to change the match type to broad to capture more queries. if you can, ex-post you can strip the query to find what term mapped to the broad matched ad that was shown.

hope that helps.