A link on John Battelle’s SearchBlog lead to some interesting information on Google AdWords pricing on inactive keywords.
It’s worth noting that every keyword has a minimum bid that is unique to how successfully that word has been used in an advertiser’s particular account. So the minimum bid for the keyword ‘Kansas City BBQ sauce’ will be different in your account than in your next door neighbor’s account, who happens to be using the same keyword.
Depending on the specifics of how Google calculates the “Quality Score,” it looks like an advertiser should be pretty aggressive in improving or dropping underperforming ads, landing pages and “other relevancy factors.” Any one of these can lower your Quality Score and force your minimum bid up.
This is a bit of a departure from my historical strategy, “if it does the keyword or ad is isn’t performing well let Google stop running it.”
I wonder if anyone has seen their minimum bid drop because of better ads or landing pages. Or if they are seeing an average cost-per-click well below the minimum bid.
Inside AdWords: A common AdWords misconception explained… [via: SearchBlog ]