Feeling Extorted

[internetheaven]

I overhauled a site so had noindex/nofollow meta tags on it for about 48 hours whilst the changes were rolled in slowly. The main page got removed from the index and three months later, it has still not be added back. Re-inclusion requests have no effect.

So, I'm stuck with buying Adwords so that people searching for my site's name don't end up on the dozens of spam/MFA/SERP pages ranking for my company name on Google.

My company name has a high value term in it, but no-one is buying ads for that phrase i.e. if you search for "mycompanyname" or "my company name" there are no ads anywhere on google.co.uk or google.com

Google will not show my ad either, because I refuse to pay the minimum bid of $4.75 per click to list my company under my company's name when there are no other ads to compete with.

How can there be a minimum bid of $4.75 for a phrase no-one is bidding on?

[Spyglass]

minimum bid isn't determined by level of competition, it will more likely be down to Google's perception of the quality of that keyword and how well it has performed historically, as well as how well the rest of your adwords account performs.
Chances are you'll not pay anywhere near that minimum bid for your keyword, so I wouldn't worry too much.

[Green_Grass]

If I may be so bold..

Minimum bid also seems to depend upon Google's perception as to how valuable the 'Keyword' is. All the conversion data and history on the keyword determines the 'inflated' price.

[RhinoFish]

ctr.

[netmeg]

ctr.

[internetheaven]

ctr.

?

[internetheaven]

Chances are you'll not pay anywhere near that minimum bid for your keyword, so I wouldn't worry too much.

I am.

UPDATE: Price just went up to over $5.00 to be listed as the only advertiser under my own company name.

[RhinoFish]

ctr = click thru rate.

it is, by far, the biggest factor in the quality score equation.

use only relevant keywords, more narrow match types, improved ads, more negative keywords -- all to focus you aim.

improve your ads via (1) better copy, (2) more thorough testing, and (3) better segmenting of your ad groups into smaller targets, making the ads more directly related to your target keywords (also referred to as... more granular account structure).

low QS and sky high prices are G's stick that's telling you the same thing i've said above... in shorthand it's...

ctr.

[shorebreak]

@internetheaven - you are not just feeling extorted. You ARE being extorted. Welcome to the world we live in, where 75% of SEM revenues come from brand & trademark terms. Users have been trained by the search/OS/browser matrix to navigate the web in a way that passes their tollbooths incessantly.