I’d recommend this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRx7AMb6rZ0
It’s also by Hal Varian and it deals with finding the sweet spot that maximizes your actual profit. It’s based on the bid simulator and […]

About destination URL’s: Every keyword can have it’s own destination URL. If a keyword has one, it is used instead of the ad’s destination URL. The mechanism is similar to keyword bids, which override the […]

Hey,
Yes, you are correct. The construct is kind of a shortcut and only works if you stick to this pattern. If you use an automated bid management system that manages individual keyword bids, you can be expect […]

I’m not sure if I get your confusion… if you set different bids, you will also pay different CPC’s. That’s all this is about.

If you want to be able to serve different ads, you will need different […]

It’s not about ad serving, it’s just about the price you are willing to pay for your traffic. Let’s say you bid on the keyword nike running shoes. Now if someone searches for exactly that, great. But some […]

The reasoning is simply that the more specific keywords would deliver higher quality traffic, therefore the higher bids. But in case the example is from the account you’re currently building, I can save you some […]

If there is enough data then there is no reason for Google to look elsewhere. But… in order to really assess the situation, one would have to go beyond the keyword level. Unless it’s an exact match, a high […]

Whenever there is not enough historical data to assess quality directly, Google has to look for alternative indicators. This is where performance data from accross your account comes in. However, if Google has […]

Yes, AdWords should show each of the campaign sometimes. But this won’t get you good results… probably one campaign will get most of the traffic. The testing conditions would be very different from a normal A/B […]

The number of keywords isn’t really important. What’s important is that your keyword selection is tightly themed so that you can write an ad that fits all keywords.

For example, you might have the keywords […]

Negatives aren’t affected by this change. It’s the same principle as with broad matches: A normal broad match keyword will match all kinds of queries, but a negative broad match is very restrictive. If this […]

The search query report should also tell you the match type, distinguishing between “Exact Match” and “Exact match (close variant)”, according to AdWords Help: […]

That’s an interesting idea and it might have some merit.

The background is this: To calculate Quality Scores, Google relies on historical data. Closely related historical data is best, because it tells the […]

Hey,
so far there is no perfect solution for this, but here are some ideas:

1. If you have some search query data on this already, look for patterns and see how far phrase matches will get you.

2. Try […]

Hey Brad,

Unfortunately I don’t know any tool that does just that. Some of the bigger PPC platforms offer dynamic campaigns based on product feeds, but that’s probably not exactly low cost.

I’ve seen an […]

Hey,

I think the answer is easy if you understand what Quality Score is/does. Google cares about your CPC bid because that’s the amount they can make whenever someone clicks on your ad. But only when someone […]

If long approval times are the problem, there are several ways to go about this. The easiest is to upload the new ads paused and make the switch when they’re approved. Another way would be to have a generic […]

That’s a tricky question. According to Google, the answer is no: A new account won’t help because Google is smarter and links quality scores to domains. But some people disagree and are convinced that new […]

Hey Property,
The implication you mention is correct: First, an ad is chosen and delivered into the auction, then the auction is performed. In the ad auction quality scores and bids are being multiplied. Quality […]