I'm curious to know what is the highest bid for a keyword in google and yahoo?

I remeber paying upwards of 26.00 a click for "online casino" ...a few moons ago though;)


Cheers


wc

"face lift new york" is currently at $99.99 for top position on Yahoo.

that is an interesting one danielanaidu, of course they are only paying $6.46 per click right now, even with that bid. If I was the competition I would bid $98 just to make them pay that much for "not playing fair."

I have seen similar bids by law firms in the case of class action-related searches. Mortage-related bids go pretty high as well.

mesothelioma is at 40 bucks on Yahoo! Paid Search

mesothelioma is at 40 bucks on Yahoo! Paid Search

yep...damn lawyers again...6 bidders over $38, another couple in the upper twenties, and quite a few over 15. amazing...

Only recently have the mesothelioma bids come down to some semblance of reality. Before they capped the settlements and litigation period, you could look any day of the week and see the top five bids between $90 and $100.

Search any of the latest FDA recalled drugs and you will find high bid prices as well. Lawyers tend to engage in ego bidding more than just about any other industry that I've seen.

Overture

Keyword: new york personal injury lawyer
Listing 1 - $41.00
Listing 2 - $23.40
Listing 3 - $13.00

Keyword: vioxx attorney
Listing 1 - $40.00

Keyword: los angeles dui lawyer
Listing 1 - $35.00
Listing 2 - $34.00
Listing 3 - $27.28

Lawyers seem to be spending a lot! ;)

(Hope this info isn't misused!)

In defense of these lawayers and their bidding strategy, if they hit a few good leads a month and only one turns into a successful settlement, they've basically paid for their marketing budget for the year. I think when you've got the potential to make millions from a single click you'd tend to get aggressive and maybe a little greedy.

I do still believe that ego plays a large part in these bids though. Yahoo and Google sure don't mind. :)

anuity buyer - $100.00 on Yahoo

During the Mesothelioma Heyday, the term mesothelioma got up to $160.00 per click. That was around September.

Few more, if it helps.

Google Adwords

[Removed by Fabius]

Overture has higher bids for these same keywords.

That 'San Diego DUI Attorney' phrase made me laugh. They must get a lot of drunks driving in that area if there's an attorney specializing in that, paying that much for a click. It's probably not a high traffic phrase though.

Phrases like 'Mesothelioma' and 'Vioxx' get a ton of traffic and they're obviously expensive too. But what I've seen is that 90% of the clicks come from those one word phrases in these cases.

Makes for an expensive campaign! Especially when big news breaks on the subject.

I understand that the highest bids are placed by law firms with class action suits. One new client in a suit agains a drug firm can mean millions $$

That 'San Diego DUI Attorney' phrase made me laugh. They must get a lot of drunks driving in that area if there's an attorney specializing in that, paying that much for a click. It's probably not a high traffic phrase though.

Phrases like 'Mesothelioma' and 'Vioxx' get a ton of traffic and they're obviously expensive too. But what I've seen is that 90% of the clicks come from those one word phrases in these cases.

Makes for an expensive campaign! Especially when big news breaks on the subject.

That got me thinking. Take a look at the alleged searches for the following terms in May 2005 alone provided in the Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) keyword research tool:

19481 san diego dui attorney
18961 san diego dui lawyer
868 san diego dui defense lawyer
413 san diego dui law
378 san diego dui


Of course I always take this with a grain of salt: the only way you can actually tell how many searches occured using those terms is by having an unlimited budget and a nationwide campaign at both YSM and AdWords for a few months- even then some automated searches like those that must be represented in the above numbers will slip through.

That got me thinking. Take a look at the alleged searches for the following terms in May 2005 alone provided in the Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) keyword research tool:

19481 san diego dui attorney
18961 san diego dui lawyer
868 san diego dui defense lawyer
413 san diego dui law
378 san diego dui


Of course I always take this with a grain of salt: the only way you can actually tell how many searches occured using those terms is by having an unlimited budget and a nationwide campaign at both YSM and AdWords for a few months- even then some automated searches like those that must be represented in the above numbers will slip through.


As much as I've seen local search not work, in my experience, this would probably be a great opportunity for it. If these phrases even get half that traffic in a national campaign, at those high bids, then any reasonable budget would be gone in a week.

With local search you're in front of the right people and you're paying a lot less too. These geocentric phrases are what local search was built for. If I was running a San Diego DUI attorney's campaign I'd probably put him into a local and national, set up a testing budget for a month or two and then see what actually converts.

Thanks for those stats though...I never would have imagined them getting that much traffic. Cheers!

leftover, thanks for the great point. Local search is certainly "ripe for the picking." San Diego has long been on the fore-front of local searches in the US. When I started in San Diego first working with goto.com (which became Overture) we were lucky to have many searchers using the geographical modifier "San Diego." I believe San Diego is still one of the leaders in this type of search...it seems that they just "got it" sooner than the rest of the US. Now I think that NY, Houston, and Chicago have as many locally modified searches, based on something I saw recently but cannot find to quote (anyone?)

Although local search has eclipsed the overall effectiveness of bidding nationwide for such a term as "san diego hair stylist," for example, it still works fairly well. I am disappointed by the fact that Yahoo has not yet added geographical limitation ability to sponsored search, instead focusing on keeping "local search" separate. I use the AdWords geo-targeting feature and it is very effective. What I generally do when not using "local" (or on the side) is actually run three campaigns: one locally targeted AdWords campaign without using geo-modifiers (i.e.: "hair stylist"), and two (one at G and one at Y!) national campaigns using the geo modifier (i.e.:"san diego hair stylist). This seems to work well.

Sorry to go a little off topic, but now let me get back on topic: in the previous example, the term "san diego hair stylist" costs .25 and.30, respectively in G (approx) and Y! for first place, yet the term "hair stylist" served in the SD region alone cost approximately twice as much for Number 1 in G at .50. Another example would be "beauty salon" at .70 non-geo-modified vs .20 "san diego beauty salon" at G and a surprising .96 at Y1 (due to two people battling it out...third bid is in at .38).


Of course this is but a very small sample, but wondering if anyone else has had similar metrics?

Guys,

Where do I look for this kinda information? I mean how do you know what keyword is bid for what amount? I have an adwords and adsense account, I bid for some keywords myself but have never been successful in finding out what the highest bid for a keyword is.

cheers,
Badrinath.V.S