How do you handle "widget store bumville" queries?

[Tonearm]

How do you guys deal with all the people searching for something in their home town who click on your ad and then bail out? Do you just bid so low for broad match terms that it doesn't matter? Do you try to add as many names of cities to the negative keyword list as you can?

[bw3ttt]

[Use exact matches]

[Tonearm]

I have ad groups with broad matches and ad groups with exact matches. Are you saying I should ditch the broad match groups?

[bw3ttt]

yes, broad match is for rich corporations trying to develop their brand name.. just use the keyword suggestion tool and use exact match only. It will allow you increase your bids because you will be getting rid of worthless clicks.

[Tonearm]

Interesting idea. Is phrase match good enough to keep out the riff raff?

[bw3ttt]

no..

"widget store" will still show for

"widget store" in bumville..

[ogletree]

I would not get rid of broad match. Those local searches are so few that it is not that big of a deal. Broad match is not just for rich companies. I hope you are one of my competitors because your throwing away a lot of good traffic. It is good to have as many exact matches and phrase matches as you can think of. It is good to have broad match with lots of negative keywords. If you are talking about one word broad match then you are right that is for rich companies. It would be stupid to not have 2 word or more broad matches.

Of course I always should say it all depends on your niche. There are probably areas where broad match can get out of hand without tons of negative keywords.

[bw3ttt]

Broad match is just wasteful.. Not only do you get clicks from "widget store" in bumville, but you can also get "related" keywords mapped to your chosen keywords that are in fact totally irrelevant. Just spend an hour or two combing through the keyword tool and use exact matches. It is the most precise and safest way to do adwords. You will miss out on some of the total available relevant traffic, but you will eliminate 100% of the irrelevant traffic.

[Tonearm]

Broad match really does get out of hand. I'm going to give phrase matching only a try. If that's not tight enough I'll do exact match only.

This will at least eliminate untargeted clicks and drastically reduce management time.

[bw3ttt]

exactly, plus it will allow you to raise bids to get more good traffic because you've stopped wasting some of your budget on garbage..

[ogletree]

You can miss out on some really important term by not doing broad match. Broad match lets you learn new words to put in exact match. Every day there are millions of new keywords typed into google that have never been typed in before. It is not a waste. Just watch your log files and put in new negative keywords every day.

[davewray]

Broad match is Not a waste of time. I suppose if you can't spend the time entering in negative keywords then it is not for you. Like Ogletree said, I hope you're one of my competitors! And what niche are you in where you can spend just a couple hours and plunk everything into exact match? In my niche there are literally tens of thousands of keywords to input...and those are the kw's available publically...Researching and coming up with unique kw's has always produced the best results...anyways, to each their own, but I would be reluctant to not bid on broad match (especially for those who are running campaigns that aren't geotargetted to specific towns/cities)...

[bw3ttt]

People do type in new searches everyday.. It might go your way or it might not.. My personal preference is to never waste money.. I particularly hate the mapped terms. I used to do broad match, but I found that my ROI was much higher using exact and that I was able to bid higher on the keywords I wanted to get traffic for thereby getting more sales overall. Advertising generally isn't about getting traffic, it is about making sales (unless you're branding). I guess it really just comes down to a matter of preference and whether or not your mapped terms and derivative terms are positive or negative.

However, in response to the original question.. You could use broad match and get a list of all towns in the US and use them as negative matches, or use exact match because phrase match will not stop them.

[eljefe3]

Yeah I've looked through my log files and adwords has helped, and it also has hurt. I did find one jewel of a seach term that has helped the bottom line, but then I see a ton of stuff appended to my one word search term that just kills me with these new higher priced clicks thanks to google's new evaluation of my sites keywords from "great" to "poor". My negative keyword filter sure is filling up!

[ken_b]

People do type in new searches everyday.

Apparently quite often [webmasterworld.com]

[Tonearm]

It sounds like the main point of using broad match is to discover new search terms. I wonder if there might be an easier way, considering the time and money involved with using broad match.

There's the Google keyword tool and Wordtracker. Are they feasible alternatives?

[davewray]

In my niche it's well know that long tail, and Very long tail keywords convert the best. I bid on broad match for just that reason. I am able to capture all of the 50% "never searched on before kw's" that I wouldn't have been able to bid on had I only been bidding on exact match. YOu're right though, it is tricky and you do have to keep a close watch on it because 75% of the keywords showing up aren't what you want clicks on.

I figure in the beginning of a campaign you are likely to lose some money by bidding on broad match...but as you weed out the "bad" words by adding them as negatives month after month after month you eventually get what you want without wasting much money. Or, wasting much less money than you are making by bidding on broad match in the first place. And, like Eljefe said, your negative kw list could become HUGE.

[bw3ttt]

I like wordtracker.. It is pretty thorough or you can use the yahoo tool but you'll have to re-arrange the word order on long-tail keywords..

online widgets buy