we are the lone ad on most of the terms. what suggestions do you have to catch the clicks? how often are you changing your ads? i've changed most of them once already. i have four campaigns and 20+ terms.

If using Adwards, you want as many clicks as possible, because you are paying for impressions. You pay to have your ad seen regardless if any one clicks. An ad like,

Every Thing Is Free
Click here, we are giving away everything.!!!!

Would be great for this type of campaign, because you are paying for the ad regardless if you receive a visitor.

With Google’s Adwards Select you pay by the click. The above ad is terrible for Pay Per Click. You Return on Investment, is not measured by how many times the ad gets shown, but by how many clicks you get vs. sales.

You only want people to click that would possibly willing to buy “now”. So you must create an ad that will not get clicked on, unless the visitor is as “targeted” as possible.

We Sell Blue Widgets.
That’s it. If you don’t want blue widgets, don’t click.

Anyway… You get my point?

Any thoughts on how Adwords select will affect Google's regular traffic?

yesterday i had 247 impressions on 19 keywords. 0 clicks. 65 on one keyword and 173 on another. the other impressions dribbled in on a few others. i'm trying to be very specific on my terms.

for example "this item for sale", "wooden this item", "brand this item", instead of "category for sale".

Say we sell blue widgets. I want to bid on the term "widgets" as it is very popular. But my click-through rate is horrible, because a lot of people search for "free widgets" or "red widgets", neither of which we deal in.

How exactly do I type it into the place where I list my keywords so that we're not displayed in any of the searches for widgets that include "free" or "red" in the search term?

Thanks.

Broad matches. If your ads are broad matched, your keyword(s) will match all searches that include that keyword. Your keywords will be broad-matched by default, unless you select a different matching option using the special characters noted below. For example, tennis clothing will match tennis clothing sales, clothing for tennis tournaments, etc.

Phrase matches. If your keywords are phrase-matched, your ad won't show if the user's search words are not in the same order as the order that your ordered keywords specify. Just surround the keywords that you would like to phrase match with double quotes (" "). For example, "tennis clothing" will exclude your ad from showing for searches for clothing for tennis tournaments but not red tennis clothing.

Negative matches. If your keywords are negative-matched, your ad won't show if the user's search includes that word. Just add the negative character (-) in front of the keyword you would like to negative match. For example, -elbow will exclude your ad from showing for searches for tennis elbow.

Exact matches. If your keywords are exact-matched, your ad won't show if the user's search includes any words besides the exact keyword or phrase that you've specified. Just surround the keywords that you would like to exact match with square brackets ([ ]). For example, [tennis clothing] will exclude your ad from showing for searches for tennis clothing sales.

[This message has been edited by castle (edited 02-22-2002).]

I'm not sure exactly where on the site I learned that. If you don't find it in the FAQ, click any "help" links on the main page where you enter your terms and see if it's in there somewhere. I know I read it when I signed up, though.