Improve your Adword or pay more

Yes, but how?

[partnermine]

I have a very simple adword. It is a geographic location. Let's call it "S#*$!horpe" (a part of the uk often ridiculed). I am also geog targetting so that the ad is only served in S#*$!horpe and the surrounding area. I am aiming to serve my add to most people who search for anything in Scunny because I want to offer them a special widgety thingy.

My blanket CPC is £0.11. "Scunthorpe" says "either increase to £0.55 or improve the quality"

I choose to improve the quality because dear old Scunny is not worth 55 pence of anyone's money.

So I add negative keywords. I negate:

Station
train
park
garden
United (a football team)
phone
high street

and a load of other stuff. I swamp the thing with negative keywords.

The message about £0.55 remains. At £0.55. I have improved quality, I'm sure I have. The advert will now serve better because it serves fewer times. Google gets a better revenue ratio. So why am I still to bid £0.55 for this vastly improved keyword?

I sense I have a basic misunderstanding of the system. Please would one of you who understands tell me where I am missing the point?

Oh heck. I love the removal of the alleged rude bit of the town, but why only the first time! It's a real town! AOL used to do that years ago!

[sailorjwd]

Make sure the ad text words match the keyword phrases.
Make sure the text on the landing page matches keyword phrases.

Then delete the keyword phrases and re-add them.
See what happens.

There are some other techniques but you'll need to sticky me for them.

[humblebeginnings]

Hi,

I experience the exact same thing.
No matter what I change in my ad-copy and no matter the negative keywords I insert, the minimum bid for a keyword stays the same. (And they are 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, 0.40, 0.50, 1.00, 5.00 and 10.00, nothing else) I tried it a hundred times.
The opposite seems to be true; I have keywords that got nothing to do with the ad-copy giving 'low' minimum bids (0.10).

My guess is that quality score is a bunch of nonsense to keep us busy for a while.

[partnermine]

Make sure the ad text words match the keyword phrases.
Make sure the text on the landing page matches keyword phrases.

Then delete the keyword phrases and re-add them.
See what happens.

I did that religiously. And guess what? of the thee keywords I deleted that were advising £0.55, two came back at £0.55 and one at £2.75.

I will sticky you

[Adam_T]

Yes, i have also experienced this problem, i don't think that quality thing seems to mean much sometimes.

Up the Scunny! W00t!