Adwords and plurals

[BoSolaris]

Ok, we got a few campaigns running, which I have JUST now been informed of. I am seeing 4 or 5 phrases being used, but then they are duplicated with plural forms, example below:

car
cars

I read, I think on this site, that Google only takes the derivative of a word. That would mean we are wasting thousands of dollars, is this true and does google treat car differently from cars during PPC.

[kevingibbons]

cars and car would be seen as two different words so you'll need to bid for both.

[nightmaster]

Ok, we got a few campaigns running, which I have JUST now been informed of. I am seeing 4 or 5 phrases being used, but then they are duplicated with plural forms, example below:

car
cars

I read, I think on this site, that Google only takes the derivative of a word. That would mean we are wasting thousands of dollars, is this true and does google treat car differently from cars during PPC.

Those are different, and also - since you pay per click you are not wasting nothing. You are only paying per click and not per search term.

[BoSolaris]

Thanks a bunch to both of you for your information and advice. I appreciate all the help this board provides. Now only if Google would show me which pages have the broken links on them, things would be perfect!

[CustardMite]

Note also that because they are different words, this is reflected when calculating your Quality Score on adverts, so you might want to consider giving the singles and plurals different adverts (in different adgroups).

[Roogle]

Also...this seems to relate to Google's match type. If you bid on the term "car" at the broad match level, your ads will display for any plural form of the term, as well as (up to) three word combination of your term, i.e. new car, used car, new cars, etc... This is great for increasing your traffic and since you only ppc, this necessary doesn't cost you any more money. The challenge is, that you do not know what combination of the term "car" searchers are searching for. And since car is a short-tail kw, your CPC will be significantly. So, it could be that the majority of your clicks are actually for "new car" (which might cost significantly less than the CPC for "car"), but you will not see this unless you build out your long-tail kw list and exact match those terms. Less traffic, but more qualified click-throughs...AND...lower CPCs.

Hope that helps a little...

[Thomas Schulz]

Thanks a bunch to both of you for your information and advice. I appreciate all the help this board provides. Now only if Google would show me which pages have the broken links on them, things would be perfect!

You could try my program A1 Website Analyzer (http://www.micro-sys.dk/products/website-analyzer/), it will tell you all sorts of data (page size, response code, response time, internal website link score etc.) including broken links and from where they have been linked.

[netegg]

Car and cars are 2 different keywords. Never is ppc a waste of money if managed correctly, set up some good tracking and you will be able to see the effects of the plural vs the singular and the referring keyword strings from Google. Example:

KW - Car (as a broad match)

REFERRING STRINGS:
buy a car
sell a car
rent a car
rally car
f1 car
flying car
car boot sale

If you see some common keyword strings coming through generating good business for you put them back into adwords as exact matches and pay more for them.

If you see string that are not good at all take the part which is not wanted and add it back in as a negative. i.e. using the example above my company buys and sell cars so I would add in the negatives:

-rally
-f1
-boot sale
-flying
-rent


hope this helps!
netegg

[netegg]

Car and cars are 2 different keywords. Never is ppc a waste of money if managed correctly, set up some good tracking and you will be able to see the effects of the plural vs the singular and the referring keyword strings from Google. Example:

KW - Car (as a broad match)

REFERRING STRINGS:
buy a car
sell a car
rent a car
rally car
f1 car
flying car
car boot sale

If you see some common keyword strings coming through generating good business for you put them back into adwords as exact matches and pay more for them.

If you see string that are not good at all take the part which is not wanted and add it back in as a negative. i.e. using the example above my company buys and sell cars so I would add in the negatives:

-rally
-f1
-boot sale
-flying
-rent


hope this helps!
netegg

...and another thing to watch out for is Google symantics and extended broad matching. I have had cases before where i bid on dress (Broad Match) and had as referring sources of traffic from that keyword things like shoes, hats clothing, clothes, which are similar but not what I wanted to buy! To minimise the effects of this stick to using phrases and exact matches, otherwise make full use of negatives otherwise you will buy traffic you do not want.

[Himanshu Shah]

here is very nice information about car companies' policy.

[LocalGoogleGuru]

Also...this seems to relate to Google's match type. If you bid on the term "car" at the broad match level, your ads will display for any plural form of the term, as well as (up to) three word combination of your term, i.e. new car, used car, new cars, etc... This is great for increasing your traffic and since you only ppc, this necessary doesn't cost you any more money. The challenge is, that you do not know what combination of the term "car" searchers are searching for. And since car is a short-tail kw, your CPC will be significantly. So, it could be that the majority of your clicks are actually for "new car" (which might cost significantly less than the CPC for "car"), but you will not see this unless you build out your long-tail kw list and exact match those terms. Less traffic, but more qualified click-throughs...AND...lower CPCs.

Hope that helps a little...

Roogle, you seem to know what you're doing, can you suggest an ebook or course on adwords?

currently I only do organic SEO and need to combine that with PPC, from your reply I learned the phrase "match type" which I googled and now know a bit more than I did before.

will post my own question rather than hijack this persons thread any further

[SM911]

here is very nice information about car companies' policy.

:p
yeah a ready optimized Adwords campaign