Recently I have seen an increase in costs for our brand variation keywords; for example, if “blue widget” were our brand name, I saw an increasing cost for “blue-widget” and “blue widget.” I checked this out by searching for “blue-widget” and “blue widget” and couldn’t see any other advertiser. Then, after 2 hours of head scratching, I found the problem.

Previous searches affect which sponsored links are displayed

Ok, so what does this mean?

If "blue-widget" or "blue widget" is a term that competitors are not targeting (i.e. searching it for the first time only), one result shows up: "bluewidget." However, If I searched for “widgets,” I get sponsored links for “redwidget,” “purplewidgets,” & “buy widgets on ebay.”

I don’t click on any of them because the sponsored links spark a memory of “Oh, I saw that ad for 'blue widgets'--I should try searching that.” 

I then type in “blue widget” or “blue-widgets.” Google will show “bluewidgets” sponsored links as well as ads from the previous search, as it still sees these ads as relevant (in the same category) and because “blue-widgets” is not a trademark.

After searching for some articles about this online I couldn’t find anything, so I called my Adwords account manager and he confirmed that this is what was happening.

This raises so many questions in my mind:

• Why is Google showing ads for keywords that competitors are not even targeting?
• If I click them, what does this show to the competitor?
• Does it come up as a click for the term “widgets,” even thought he search term was “blue-widget”?
• Is this strategy only to try and make more money from Adwords?
• Isn’t this rewarding those who don’t do research into their keywords (as their ads could show up on keywords that they are not even targeting)?

The only response I got was that it was tested and users preferred seeing more then one sponsored link!

In conclusion, I was told that I should gather all my brand keyword variations, then get a list of ALL our competitors and request to have the competitors removed from those brand term variations. Because they are not trademarked term, they would need to be processed manually, which takes a couple of weeks!

Google, don't be evil - don't make me laugh.