A: A method of finding which Ads have the highest CTR (click through ratio) for a given keyword.
Why do I want to know?
Because when I’m building an advertising campaign for an offer, I want to know who my best competition is, so I can devise a strategy to gain a viable marketshare, if not to dominate my chosen niche, as fast as possible.
Well you probably know of a “wildcard” as an “*” or “?” used by many file search functions. Of course the term originates from card games where the Joker, or some other card is nominated as a “wildcard” – which means it can substitute for any card I choose.
In the file search case “*” means “any group of characters”, and “?” means “any single character”.
Before I translate this into a keyword bid context, let me remind you of how “pay per click” advertising works, and the 3 types of keyword match you can bid for:
A “Pay Per Click” advertising campaign works like an auction. Advertisers bid for the keywords they want to trigger their ads for inclusion in Search Engine results.
- broad match – the Search Engine will return results which contain the words in the search term in an order and in any position. A broad match search is the default – where you just type the words.
- phrase match – the Search Engine will return results which contain the words in the search term in the same order, but in any position. You request a phrase match search by enclosing your search term in “” eg “flat fish”
- exact match – the Search Engine will return results which contain the words and only the words exactly as in the search term. You request an exact match search by enclosing your search term in [] eg [flat fish]
For example, if I type the term – flat fish – into a Search Engine search box, I’ll get results which may contain either flat or fish, or both.
For example, if I type the term – “flat fish” – into a Search Engine search box, I’ll get results which contain both flat and fish, in that order.
For example, if I type the term – [flat fish] – into a Search Engine search box, I’ll get results which contain the words flat fish together as written.
But remember that the position of my Ad in the results depends not only on the amount I bid, but also on how well my Ad performs.
Ad performance is measured by “Click Through Rate” (CTR). CTR is the number of times the Ad is clicked, divided by the number of times the Ad is viewed. So if my Ad is viewed by 100 visitors, and 5 of these visitors click the Ad, my CTR is 5% for that Ad and keyword combination.
Google rewards Ads with higher CTRs by raising their position in the results, for a given bid price. They may even allow me to reduce my bid cost at the same time.
Of course, many searchers I’d like to see my Ad will use search terms which are similar to my “target” keywords, but not necessarily exactly the same.
So much for the reminders. We’ll get to answer the question soon – maybe next time…
Glen