Below first page bid, but no other competitors

First page bid goes up daily

[bouncybunny]

I'm completely new to Adwords (but an experience webmaster in other regards), so it's probably my fault that I am confused. However, I have read a lot of Google's online help in regards to this subject and I am still confused.

I work in an extremely small not for profit niche. I set up a series of ads targeted at some products we promote and and let it go. After a day or so on successful clickthroughs, all my ads stopped working due to "poor keyword relevance". The keywords are 100% targeted at my site (we deal in "Widget Consultancy" and the keywords are based around "Widget Consultancy" (as well as the keywords that Goole suggested). There are never more than three other adwords ads displayed when I type in relevant searches. Often we are the only one. We also appear to be in positions 1-4 for most keywords in the Adwords control panel. The ads do have a lowish clickthrough rate, but that kind of comes with the territory.

However, it seems that i can buy my way into a higher quality. I upped our minimum cost per click to Google's recommendations and all was well for a day or two. Then the ads stopped showing again for the same reasons. However, it seems that if I double my cost per clicks, I can once again improve my ads quality score.

Is this really how it works?

[bouncybunny]

Actually, upon looking at the account again, the low clickthrough rates appear to occur mainly on the Search Partners network. Is that normal?

[Acrill]

Yes, that is normal. Impressions on the Search Partners network tend to generate lower click-through rates than Impressions on the Google Search network.

Take the first-page bid recommendations lightly when you have search partners turned on.