"to quote", or not to quote...

In the big 2 PPC companies, I notice that a quoted phrase will have a much higher CTR of it's unquoted mirror. Then again, a few keyword phrases I have unquoted will have a much higher CTR than it's quoted mirror. Anyone want to give their view as to why?

I am very interested... can you explain what you mean in a little more detail, please?

Sure thing. Say I want to bid on the phrase: black belt
If I go into AdWords or Overture and insert that phrase as:

black belt

then add another phrase as:

"black belt"

I'll more than likely get at least 2x the CTR from the quoted phrase than the unquoted phrase. Now, a couple phrases I noticed are just the opposite.

Thanks for explaining!

I am glad that you are experimenting. Please let us know how this works out.. I would like to know if these results hold after thousands of impressions.

EGOL

3,220,350 impressions & 41,000 clicks enough gathered data? (and that's just in AdWords) ;)

Juuuuuuuuust figured out what's happening. Doing quotes forces phrase matching... no quotes equals broad matching.

Sorry.

Wow, that is enough data to make a decision.

Looks like exact match works best. That's one thing that I have not tested. I need to check it out... maybe I can bid higher on the exact match and get more action. Might increase profit per day.

I wouldn't like to be paying for all those clicks if I wasn't able to sell anything to those clicking through to my site.

Personally I think keywords that are more obscure are worth the time and hassle, if the product they are searching for is going to meet your customers needs and potentially create a sale more often than a broader non-quoted phrase.

I found that non-quoted keywords were pretty good for building traffic quickly and learning what people are searching for, but I've found that the broad matching often goes too far by not giving the searcher what they are looking for and it ends up burning my money too quickly.

I guess it is a balancing act that only experience can tell you the truth.

I hope the competition isn't listening, but oh well.

For us, broad matched terms (no quotes) get fewer conversions than phrase matched terms (quoted). There are only a few exceptions for us that I've found.

There really is no replacement for web server logs that show user search terms. This is how I covered the more esoteric terms. ;)

But I do agree about paying for non-conversions. In our business you have angels and devils (Clickz.com's "Climbing out of the Lowest Price Trap" article). There are curiousity seekers because of the company name and hence why I totally dropped the single word of 'sausage'. WAY too many clicks and not enough conversions. I found we still get broad matched for that word under certain terms, so why pay double. ;) Every few days I go in and check click vs conversion rates. We have a VERY high CTR & conversion rate anyway, because I optimize (disable) non-productive phrases after watching their levels of usefulness.

I wrote some detailed explanations of the exact, phrase and broad matches and how they affect the search terms that your ad competes against in this old discussion:

Can I get your opinion on "" -vs- []