MM&T

This was posted by lacrosse_20 on the wickedfire forum. If you have never been there and have a weak stomach, I don't recommend it.

I just thought I'd throw this out there for the total n00bs who are thinking about getting into AdWords PPC. One of the things you have to consider when formulating your strategy is the competitive environment in which you are going to be playing.

So, how do you know how competitive things are going to be for your given keywords? Google gives you an indication ("advertiser competition") when you create the campaign, but what about before that step? What if you want to just test the waters and see how heavy the compeition is going to be (read: potentially expensive) for just a couple of your considered keywords? You could simply put them in Google, and keep track of which Adwords ads show up, and then refresh, and refresh, and... hope that Google gives you the "More sponsored links" link. Or you could just do this:

Code:

http://google.com/sponsoredlinks?q=keyword here

with your keyword where the keyword here is.

This will give you a listing of all the ads that are running for that keyword (adcopy research anyone?) and give you a count of just how many ads are bidding. This, of course, is where "More sponsored links" takes you to... but why not go direct?