The strategy is based on this interesting concept: A good portion of Search Queries are actually unique,meaning they have never been typed in before. The stats given were upwards of 50% of the search queries at Google on any givenday have NEVER BEEN TYPED IN before.

I have seen this type of research in a couple other places before, but not sure where I saw it. If anyone knows, send me the link and I will be forever grateful. For veteran SEOs this research might be unbelieveable, but if you track how you yourself are doing power searches you will see that you end up trying a lot of different versions and combinations when you are trying to hunt something down.

There was some other research done by another company though that had totally different findings. There findings were that most people use combinations of only 2 words for the most part, and rarely use even 3 terms. And never any complex phrase searching, always just2 or 3 broad terms.

How can two different companies get different results like this? I guess it depends where you look. One source of data comes from stuff like the ask jeeves peek behind the keyhole. Here's a bunch of places to check out just in case you aren't familar with this sort of thing:

Be aware that some of these things will show adult content:

Ask Jeeves Peek Through The Keyhole
http://www.askjeeves.com/docs/peek/

Shows you some of the search queries at ask jeeves

MetaCrawler MetaSpy
http://www.metaspy.com/

same deal here

Kanoodle Search Spy
http://www.kanoodle.com/spy/

Yahoo Buzz Index
http://buzz.yahoo.com/

This may get more interesting when they get their new search algorithm fully implemented.

Ok now this is one source of data, the other one was done by a company that monitored server logs of a lot of websites and additionally had a piece of spyware (that people volunteered to use for the experiment) installed on their computers and it logged everything people typed in and searched for.

It was also an interesting experiment because a "searching session" could be monitored so that you could track everything people would do in one sitdown with their favorite search engine. They found in some cases that people would type in two words, then when they didn't find what they wanted type in the SAME two words again, kind of like hoping the Engine would guess what they were looking for and somehow show different results!!

Sound like someone you know?

Anyway I thought this was pretty funny. So what does all this have to do with the strategy to improve your results in Google Adwords?

In a nutshell, the strategy is to go ahead and use BROAD MATCH on some terms and go ahead and get some slightly less targeted traffic for awhile. Could be a week, or a month depending on your budget, but the longer the better. Then analyze your server logs to see how people found you. People type in the darndest things sometimes, and looking through the logs or your analyzer software can give you some new ideas and new directions for your keyword lists. Then, when you are ready, add these keywords where appropriate and use them to expand your keyword lists and target better. Ideally, you should see your clickthrough rates improve because you are using some better keywords.

I usually do this in the opposite direction- I look through the server logs to find keywords that I don't want people to find me on, and I add them to my negative keyword list in my Adwords account so that I am notpaying for useless clicks. But I do a lot of "nichy" products and campaigns where ROI is paramount, and less but more highly focused traffic is perfectly fine.

I am going to look through my campaigns and clients to see if I can find a match for trying out this strategy.

We will see how it goes.

Send your comments and see ya next time

-Steve

Steve Blom
Certified Google Adwords Professional

Adwords Training Video Author:

Blog:
http://marketingnewsblog.adwordstraining.org

Free Adwords video:
http://www.adwordstraining.org/video/free_adwords_tutorial_video.htm

Contact: steve@adwordstraining.org