New to Adwords - Minimum bidding

[tomhumf]

Hi,

I run a very niche ecommerce site. I'm sure I read somewhere that if there are less than 5 results in the sponsered links for a particular keyword, you can get displayed there for the lowest bid amount.

I just created an account and found keywords with less than 5 results in sponsored links, and bid £0.01 for each Ad. They aren't showing up yet - but I only created them about 10 minutes ago.

Will they eventually show up, or am I wrong on this?

[tomhumf]

Hmm, I just searched for the keyword in Firefox and the Ad is showing in 4th position, but still doesn't show when I search in Chrome. Can anyone explain this to me?

Thanks

[netmeg]

Your ad probably doesn't show for every search unless you've set a pretty large daily budget. Otherwise it will space them out so that it serves them fairly evenly through the day without going too far over your budget.

[RhinoFish]

also, your browsers likely have separate cookies, and they affect what you see on a search. check things here on both browsers:
www.google.com/adpreview

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Just a quick addition to the conversation.

[...] I'm sure I read somewhere that if there are less than 5 results in the sponsered links for a particular keyword, you can get displayed there for the lowest bid amount. I just created an account and found keywords with less than 5 results in sponsored links, and bid £0.01 for each Ad. [...]

AdWords has actually not worked with a 'minimum bid' defined purely on the basis of the number of competitors one has for a given keyword for some number of years. Not since the advent of what I always think of as quality based bidding - which was, I think, introduced in August 2005.

Here is an excerpt from a July 14 2005 Inside AdWords blog post on the subject. Though things have certainly evolved since 2005 (as for example with the concept of an 'estimated first page bid') this explains the basic change and puts a date to it:

[...] We’re replacing the static USD $0.05 minimum bid for all keywords with a minimum bid that varies based on the quality of your keyword and ad text. High quality keywords (determined by the Quality Score) will have minimum bids as low as $0.01, while keywords with a lower Quality Score will be assigned higher minimum bids. As long as the maximum CPC meets the minimum bid, your keyword will be active. You no longer have to worry about on hold, in trial, or disabled keywords. [...]

AWA