One Word Search: When Less is More

Most experienced pay-per-click advertisers are already aware of the pitfalls of bidding on keywords that consist of only one word. As a member of the 7Search.com support staff, we often caution our advertisers against adding single terms to their keywords list. The main reason we do this is because one word search terms opens the advertiser up to a large amount of irrelevant searches/clicks. For example, if your keyword list contains the words “free” or “food” then you run the risk of receiving clicks for searches on everything from “free car repair” to “holiday food list” even if your site has nothing to do with these topics. It is understandable why so many advertisers bid on such general terms as it opens their ad up to a larger amount of traffic which ultimately increases the amount of exposure their website receives. This is where a decision must be made as to whether or not the increased site exposure is worth the extra money spent on irrelevant clicks.

Now before you run out and delete your entire list of single search terms from your PPC account hold on a moment because here is where we switch gears a bit. Interestingly enough, after so much talk about why it may not be the best idea to use single keywords in PPC campaigns, recent search engine reports have begun to send a different message. There has been a growing trend that shows consumers performing a great deal more one-word searches. As stated by Hitwise, the online intelligence service which collects data from ISP networks and Search Engines globally, “We’re seeing one-word search queries’ share of total search activity growing fast: from 20.3 percent of all search engine queries in January 2009 to 27.2 percent in October 2011”. The question now becomes, why have consumers begun conducting more one-word searches?

Well, there may actually be a few reasons for this. One reason could be that more consumers are using mobile devices to perform searches on the go. It’s often easier & faster to type in one word as opposed to several when using small, handheld devices to search the web. Another reason may be the instant suggestions that appear below the search box when using such platforms as Google Instant. Let us also consider something that many may not be aware of and that is the fact that when someone types in a URL as a search term those are usually counted as one-word searches. Additionally, what about the fact that search engines are now able to pick up the web surfers location and return a complete list of nearby results? This makes it even easier to find what you are looking for by searching one relevant word.

While this new search trend could be occurring for any number of reasons the fact that it is occurring at all should send a pretty strong message to online advertisers who have always believed long search queries to be the highest converters. Instead of eliminating all the one-word search terms, maybe it’s time to consider adding MORE of them combined with the use of exact match to help eliminate irrelevant clicks. This could be the perfect work-around that puts you on track to building a winning advertising campaign.