April 20th, 2009 by 
“Keep your eyes on the prize…hold on.”…Bruce Springsteen
Many of the paid search accounts that I’ve worked with contain a geographical component and I have a well-used spreadsheet that contains the names of the biggest U.S. Cities, States, and State Abbreviations for those accounts. I often combine this list with my “core” keywords so that my ads can reach the geographical paid search long tail.
But, as I was examining the conversion keywords on one particular account, I had the following paid search epiphany:
“IN” is not only the abbreviation for Indiana but is also a very common adverb / preposition.
“OR” is not only the abbreviation for Oregon but is also a common conjunction.
I was getting conversions with “Keyword + ‘in’” or “Keyword + ‘or’” that had nothing to do with geography. Instead, these were unique long tail searches that I not likely would have captured but for my inclusion of “in” or “or” with my keyword. The remainder of the queries weren’t accounted for in my campaign and I would have had a much lower chance of landing the visitor except in the unlikely event that I would have captured them with my much more competitive generic keyword.
When I do searches in AdWords that contain “Keyword + ‘in’” or “Keyword + ‘or’”, I notice that my ads are in higher relative positions vis a vis my competitors.
Therefore, if you are looking to get some additional long tail exposure with your paid search campaigns, try combining your core keywords with prepositions and conjunctions. I think you’ll find the additional ad exposure to be quite worth it.
I never even thought of that – nice one Todd.
Oh good – it looks like apostrophes aren’t breaking my keyword multiplier tool…
I’d say the same would be true beyond AdWords and into search engine analytics in general. Thanks for the insight.
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I like the idea Todd and I would be interested to see more data. One thought I had though: The real gold mine would be the 3rd word(s) wouldn’t it? Nobody searches Keyword + IN. They search for Keyword + IN + Place. Seems to me that mining your search query reports or analytics would provide the real value as you discover and add the locations (for IN) or alternatives (for OR) that searchers associate with your targeted keyword.
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This has been an issue for a while, and why stop there…
I see lot of ads for ‘plumber doctors’. They might mean Maryland plumbers (plumbers md).
Where is Orange County? If you just think Orlando and LA; keep going.
Related- all those geo keyowrds and issues (from 06) http://www.bgtheory.com/blog/drilling-down-into-geographic-keywords/
I love discovering stuff like this. Like when I realized that the phrase “green medical stool” could mean two very different things, and I was unintentionally bidding on a phrase about poo.
Good times.
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Great tip, Todd.
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Great point Todd. Kinda one of those headsmacking tips.
Thanks Todd…Yup, this one goes in the daily training bin
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Interesting find Todd. I would have never realized that.
I discovered this trick about a year ago, when I gained a client who runs an online shop for dog products and his own AdWords campaign, told me that the best keyword for him is “for dogs” (para perros in spanish). So, everyone searching for a product “for dogs” would see his ad!
Since then, I use “for”, “in”, “to” etc. and it really works well!
This could be quite interesting, I had never thought of this, great tip Todd. Glad I found this rather then never.
Great tip! I have never thought of that…I bet that would cut down on PPC cost as well. Thanks for sharing.