Adwords Max Bid $2.52 On No Ad Competition Keyword

Hi TheArtfulDodger2012,

It is difficult to find keywords that truly have no ads, unless you are looking at terms which Google does not want to serve any ads. You need to realize that if there is search volume, but no ads, there is almost always a good reason for that. If a term is highly ambiguous, and very low in commercial intent, you may find relatively high minimum bids required to have your ads served, and it is due to those high minimum bid requirements that you see no advertisers.

It is also difficult to verify that there are no competitors because ads are often localized and there might be a lot of competition, just none in your particular zip/postal code. Or, other reasons that you are not seeing ads for your particular geo location, language setting, device, or network.

There might be competition from the Search Partners network, or call only campaigns. The only way to be certain is to start testing to see what you find when you actually run ads.

Another thing to consider is that initially your keywords will be assigned a Quality Score of 6/10, which effectively prevents you from getting the best possible CPC. You will have to do a little advertising, and earn a high QS before you will be able to get the lowest CPC that is available for your keyword, even if there is no competition. In fact, if you are truly the only advertiser for a keyword, you will never be able to outperform the average CTR because you are the average. Therefore as I understand the QS algorithm it will be impossible for you achieve any QS higher than 6 until after you have at least one other advertiser competing with you for that same keyword.

Having said that, it is not unusual to have a CPC that is significantly lower than suggested bids, especially on low volume search terms.