I wasn't aware of having two of the same keyword until earlier today, but I assumed Google always treated the keywords as not case sensitive?
When I was new at Adwords and knew nothing, I created seperate keywords based on case. Both would receive impressions and clicks.
There was some discussion at the time that Adwords does indeed take case into account, but I've come to believe that's a fallacy.
Now that I'm older and wiser I make all keywords lower case.
I just did a test with a query all in upper case and my ad showed. I tried some truly unlikely case variations on the keyword and my ad showed also. Needless to say, the keyword in my Adgroup was all lower case.
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My best guess as to what is happening to your keyword is that when being considered for the "auction", the version it finds that has historically performed better is what shows. Based on my test just now, I'd say it has no bearing on how the searcher typed "widgets".
In effect, Google is keeping 2 sets of stats for the capitalized vs. the lower case version. Surprising considering the vaunted Adwords algo that supposedly takes 1,000 factors into account before showing a keyword.
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While I personally feel it is a waste and confusing with regards to managing campaigns, I'll bet we hear from someone who finds this strategy has somehow worked for them.
Perhaps just by dumb luck, "Widgets" has fared better when picked to show (regardless of the capitalization) than "widgets" in their Adgroup and is more likely to show.
Someone could argue this strategy "works" better for them since perhaps the poorer performing "widgets" would drag the overall "widgets" CTR down.
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My own feeling is that it's simply a 'glitch' in the algo and there are superior ways to boost CTR -- like simply having relevant, well targeted keywords.
Therefore, I'll stick my neck out here and say there is no real advantage to having the same keyword with different case variations.
For you, since "Widgets" happens to be performing better, I'd leave it be for now and dump "widgets", but I wouldn't consider it to be a viable strategy to use with future keywords.
I assumed Google always treated the keywords as not case sensitive
I agree you are correct in that assumption. I'd say the "Widget" clicks didn't necessarily represent people who literally typed "Widgets" as opposed to "widgets". "Widgets" has just managed to accumulate a better quality score due to "luck".
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As was once said about Windows 95, there was no single person at MicroSoft who truly understood how it all worked. This was a comparison to Windows NT, where a single software engineer designed the project premise and understood it all. With all the whimsies of Adwords of late, I suspect Adwords is veering toward the "Windows 95" syndrome ;)
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For one of my long running, very succesful campaigns, I suddenly had a flat 2007. I've since found the solution to regain a good profit: I downsized my Adwords spend to 25% of what it had been.
I don't think that's what Google wants us to do, but with so little transparency of late, so many mixed messages, too much automation of Ad and keyword assessment, that's the direction they are sending us.
It used to be so simple: good ads, good keywords, reasonable bids and success was quite predictable.
Google, are you listening?
Israel
As pointed out on another forum, where the same question was asked and after looking more closely, I think it's fair to say that Google simply splits the impressions up between the 2.
It will choose whichever has say, the highest CTR / Quality Score etc. at that time.
