I read an interesting article in Marketing Pilgrim this morning
(http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/07/google-adwords-using-non-selected-and-often-non-targeted-keywords.html) which highlighted some negative problems encountered when setting generic search terms as Broad Match.

The basic premise was that the author ran the new Search Query Performance report in Google Adwords for the first time for one of their clients’ campaigns. This new report allows you to see the actual search queries searchers used to find your ad. The resulting report found that ads had been shown on keywords which were not in the account. The article hypothesised a number of reasons why this may be happening, which I will let you read in the article if you are interested.

Having ads appearing on non targeted terms is obviously not cost effective and will not lead to quality traffic being directed to the site. I would therefore HIGHLY recommend that if you have a Google Adwords account and are using broad match keywords, to run a Search Query Performance report. This will show you if your ads are appearing against any terms which are not targeted to your campaign. If you find any non-targeted terms I would then add these to the negative keyword list to ensure that budget is allocated solely to highly targeted terms.

As always if you have any feedback or would like any additional information, please leave a comment and a member of the Leapfrogg team will get back to you.