One-cent keywords appear to be impossible.

Has anyone ever spent $.01 on a keyword?

[mmmwowmmm]

This is the first time I’ve used adwords since they dropped the minimum bid allowed to $.01. So I came up with about 250 keywords for a new site, plugged them in and ran the cost estimator at .01 per click, and not one single keyword was excepted. All 250 were labeled “inactive for search”.

So I raised the bid to .02, same thing. At $.03 some of the keywords (about 5%) were accepted, but were estimated to get zero clicks per day. At $.04 a few more keywords were "accepted", but were also estimated to get zero clicks per day. When I raised the bid to $.05 per click, miraculously, I was estimated to get about 1000 clicks a day.

These are not “hot” keywords, not at all. This is for a non-commercial site with very little competition. Many of the keywords, if you run a search for them on google, trigger no ads at all – yet I can’t seem to run them for less than .05 per click.

So I’m wondering: Is there some trick to getting a $.01 keyword accepted? Has anyone out there EVER had a $.01 keyword accepted?

[AdWordsAdvisor]

mmmwowmmm, there is a publicly available source of AdWords information which recently posted on this very subject. However, the WebmasterWorld terms of service prevent me from linking to it.

Still the post is very on-topic to your question, so I will excerpt the heart of it below:

...The minimum bid, also known as the minimum CPC, is the least that one can pay to have an ad appear for a particular keyword in a particular account. It is very important to know, however, that one's minimum bid is entirely unrelated to how many other advertisers are using the same keyword. Instead, since August of 2005, the minimum bid has been quality based. To put it simply, the higher the Quality Score of a keyword, the lower one's minimum bid will be for that keyword.

So, very low minimum bids are earned by creating highly relevant ad text and keywords that get outstanding Quality Scores. And only the most relevant keyword and ad text combinations will earn a minimum bid of $0.01 (or its equivalent in other currencies).

It's worth noting that every keyword has a minimum bid that is unique to how successfully that word has been used in an advertiser's particular account. So the minimum bid for the keyword 'Kansas City BBQ sauce' will be different in your account than in your next door neighbor's account, who happens to be using the same keyword.

How can you lower your minimum bid? The short answer is to improve your Quality Score by optimizing your ads.

I hope this'll help to clarify things. If some of the terms used in the excerpt are not familiar to you, you'll be able to find out more about them in the AdWords Help Center @ [adwords.google.com...] (The actual post has several links to the Help Center, for clarification.)

AWA

[celgins]

All of my keywords are showing "inactive" under $0.05.

I'll take a look at AA's notes and see if that helps.

[Eurydice]

I have many KWs with clicks at 1 cent. Listen to AWA. Optimize your campaign. It really does work.

[hooloovoo22]

I'll offer a "me too" post here for you mmmwowmmm

Mine that have the $.01 CPC are VERY targeted and have an extremely high CTR.

[dane120]

What is the process of advert optimisation?

Is it split testing adverts against each other to find which has the highest CTR and deleting the advert with the lower CTR and repeating this process?

If so how many clicks gives enough evidence to show that an advert has been deemed relevant?

[digicam]

mmm, I am not convinced, what effect does CTR/Quality scoring have in relation to CPC?

ie if I bid 10c on a keyword then I will always be above you if you are at 1c no matter how targeted your add is - that is my belief anyway.

I would guess CTR/quality would only have an effect if you were at 9c and me at 10c - then a better add would score higher

Every niche term I have looked at recently has at least a couple of bids on them - amazon are always at the top and they spend big.

If someone has a genuine 1c keyword then sticky it - I would love to see one so I can see if they exist.

[Temedar]

It depends on your niche (and competitors).
I've got several terms that do not trigger any other ads besides mine and an ad that gets 1c clicks while occupying the "northern" spot. The average CTR for these terms is 35% (35 clicks for 100 searches).
However, this product does not bring me much profit & I'm currently thinking about dropping it.

[wedouglas]

I have some at .01 per click. But they are super high volume and ctr. around 7K clicks a day and a ctr of %40+

I recenly had one of the same nature jump up to 2.5 cents per click though.

The reason you can't get many at .01 is because of the nonsense broad matching. When some affiliate matches 1000's of keywords and gets a poor ctr, his min bid goes up. if you are above him, that also causes your cpc to go up. Personally, I don't think this makes sense. They are forcing people with low quality to bid more, which in effect causes the people with good quality to pay more. It is essentially penalizing both the quality ads and the poor ones.

[edited by: mona at 1:29 pm (utc) on Feb. 9, 2006]
[edit reason] language [/edit]

[digicam]

"I don't think this makes sense. They are forcing people with low quality to bid more, which in effect causes the people with good quality to pay more. It is essentially penalizing both the quality ads and the poor ones. "

I suppose if are a shareholder it would be seen as a stroke of genius ;)

[edited by: mona at 1:28 pm (utc) on Feb. 9, 2006]
[edit reason] language from quote [/edit]

[DamonHD]

Hi,

Most of my low-volume, but fairly-narrowly-targetted, keywords are GBP0.01 on content, and GBP0.04 on search, and work fine.

I have smallish adgroups with 10--200 keywords in each group, and weed out the poor ones as and when I can.

Rgds

Damon