Google Adwords—Bid is Below First Page Message
November 10th 2008 11:49 pm
One of the latest big changes by Google is to display a message next to a keyword that says something like “Bid is below first page bid estimate of $0.20.”
Now, logically you would think that you’d see this message for every keyword that causes your ad to show on > page 1, and this amount is what you need to move it to page 1.
But this isn’t necessarily the case. This message also depends on the quality score for the keyword.
For example, I got this message for a keyword that showed my average position as 3.1. Now, clearly 3.1 is on the first page of ads. So why was Google telling me this?
On the other hand, I have a keyword that shows an average position of 12.1—clearly not on the first page, and yet I do not see this message.
So what happens if there is only 1 page of ads total? Logically you’d think you would never see this message, but that isn’t the case.
I had the good fortune to bid on a keyword that had absolutely no ads associated with it. That doesn’t happen very often, but it pointed out something interesting. I assumed that since I’m the only advertiser, I could bid as low as I wanted and still get the #1 position. Wrong!
I bid the lowest amount possible—$.01. Google showed me the dreaded bid is below first page message. And I found that if I went to Google and typed in that keyword, my ad wasn’t showing at all.
So in other words, even though there were no other advertisers, Google would rather not show my ad than show it and only charge me .01.
Interesting…
Now, logically you would think that you’d see this message for every keyword that causes your ad to show on > page 1, and this amount is what you need to move it to page 1.
But this isn’t necessarily the case. This message also depends on the quality score for the keyword.
For example, I got this message for a keyword that showed my average position as 3.1. Now, clearly 3.1 is on the first page of ads. So why was Google telling me this?
On the other hand, I have a keyword that shows an average position of 12.1—clearly not on the first page, and yet I do not see this message.
So what happens if there is only 1 page of ads total? Logically you’d think you would never see this message, but that isn’t the case.
I had the good fortune to bid on a keyword that had absolutely no ads associated with it. That doesn’t happen very often, but it pointed out something interesting. I assumed that since I’m the only advertiser, I could bid as low as I wanted and still get the #1 position. Wrong!
I bid the lowest amount possible—$.01. Google showed me the dreaded bid is below first page message. And I found that if I went to Google and typed in that keyword, my ad wasn’t showing at all.
So in other words, even though there were no other advertisers, Google would rather not show my ad than show it and only charge me .01.
Interesting…
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