This demanded a phone call to Google AdWords headquarters for an explanation. Quickly; to the bat phone!

We went through the usual rigmarole of getting to the source of the question and I asked what kind of other search terms would trigger an exact match keyword. The answer was that a lack of spacing in a user’s search term with this particular word could cause it to trigger the keyword,  as could additional characters or punctuation that wouldn’t deviate the search term from the keyword’s essence (I never thought I’d use the word ‘essence’ when describing an AdWords issue).

The upshot? Exact match isn’t 100% exact. Is that big news? Probably not, but it’s worth investigating whether you should find cross-competition between exact matches where two words are together in one match and separated in another.

Following a raft of new features (Top V Side, AdWords Editor 9.5) and the removal of a few useful tools (Wonder Wheel and Sets), this latest addition to AdWords metrics is equally a blessing and a curse. I say this because the Top V Side segment showed us how poorly adverts performed when they appeared outside the top 3 positions, so what this new metric essentially does is further force bids up. Quality Score has never been so important, as if your Ad Rank suffers, you’ll see a significant slide in your positioning as more and more advertisers cotton on to this data feed.

There’s an issue of accuracy with these estimated bids, as the Estimated First Page Bid can sometimes be way off the mark, but that doesn’t mean these new figures should be disregarded. As mentioned above, the Top V Side view will be taken into account along with the Est. Top Page Bid and you may well see the cost rising in your market.

We’re prepared for this at PPC Rescue and we hope you are too!

Thanks to Search Engine Watch for the data.

There’s a popular misconception about keywords that sees advertisers load hundreds of them into their accounts in the belief that more is better, that a swell of keywords will rustle up a bevy of customers falling over themselves to make purchases. The fundamental flaw in equipping so many keywords is that you’ll inevitably draw in unwanted, poor quality traffic and end up pushing up your own costs as keywords compete with one another – the one with the highest Ad Rank will enter the auction, and you can almost guarantee that it’ll be the one with a ropey Quality Score and elevated Maximum CPC.

1000 is actually a rather low keyword figure for some of the accounts that have entered the doors of PPC Rescue. The vast majority of our managed accounts now run on fewer than eight keywords per Ad Group yet when we originally took on these accounts, they came in with in excess of 3000 keywords (and in one case, over 5000)! The most startling element of these voluminous accounts was that hundreds of keywords hadn’t received a single click in all the time they’d been running, and some hadn’t even accrued an impression! If you’ve keywords that sit there generating impressions without clicks, you’re damaging your overall CTR without receiving any traffic whatsoever.

Beating your competitors to the better positions doesn’t come down to how many keywords you have, but how you utilise a powerful and select few.