Hello talbatz, and welcome to WebmasterWorld. ;)

How would it be possible for me to know which advertisers are bidding on which keywords in what countries?

could i know how much they are paying?

I don't know of a way to do this - and is certainly not possible from within the AdWords interface. Others have more insight about other options available elsewhere.

That said, I am not sure that hunting down this information is a truly useful way to spend one's time. I think it is more useful, as a rule, to concentrate on optimizing one's own advertising, and tracking (and optimizing) one's own ROI (Return on Investment.)

This is especially true when it comes to what your competitors are paying - since what they pay will depend on how effectively they advertise - and it might be quite different than what you pay, either higher or lower.

I say this because one's ad rank (ad position) does not hinge only on what they pay. It also depends on their Quality Score, and it is possible for someone with an excellent Quality Score to appear above another advertiser, while paying less to do so.

AWA

Thanks AWA for the warm welcome! :-]

Of course, optimization and positive roi are a must, and i do focus on these quite a lot, and this forum has indeed helped me a lot with these (thanks :-) but that's not the issue here...

I know for sure a person browsing from Brazil will see different ads than the ones a person browsing from Greece will see - probably their IP's are being detected or the browser's language... but for sure, they will see different ads in google, in yahoo, in ANY site really... both text ads and banners alike - and that's what i'm trying to investigate.

Please let me clarify my question further:
Let's say I'm promoting a lifestyle product for the US/Canada market, in English, using several different search engines (buying clicks mainly from adwords and overture). NOW, my client wants to market the same product to other markets, namely Great Britain, Australia/NZ and South Africa. I need to know exactly who is bidding on the word "<snip>" in each one of those countries... how can i do that?

I feel like i'm asking a pretty obvious question... someone here must have some professional tool I'm not aware of!

[edited by: buckworks at 1:24 pm (utc) on Apr 6, 2010]
[edit reason] Removed specifics; see TOS [/edit]

I need to know exactly who is bidding on the word "nutrition supplement" in each one of those countries... how can i do that?

Well, perhaps not the scalable solution you're looking for... but for select queries, Google's Ad Preview Tool works great:[adwords.google.com ]

How would it be possible for me to know which advertisers are bidding on which keywords in what countries?

could i know how much they are paying?

Beyond doing a little competitive research (which, to me, is always advised), I think AdwordsAdvisor's point is that outside of potentially customizing your ads based on your competition's ads, most of the other details that you'll find will not impact your focus on developing the best converting flow for each keyword.

There's also no reliable way to determine what your competition is paying per click per keyword, with Quality Score as a factor - it wouldn't help you even if you did know.

AdwordsAdvisor is right: There is no way to see a competitor's keywords.

There are software packages that promise this ("See your competitor's keywords and ads!"), but that's a lie.

AdwordsAdvisor also adds something that the vast majority of advertisers do not understand: a good campaign with a low bid will rank HIGHER than a poor campaign with a very high bid.

The most important factor is the overall quality of the landing page. Not just the keyword's quality score. The page itself gets a score. That score can be hundreds of points. With a bit of a formula, a good page with a low bid (say, $0.25) can beat a poor page with a $5.00 bid.

Don't worry too much about your bids. Put 80% of your your efforts into improving the landing page. Use Website Optimizer. Test and improve and test again.

I would also point out that worrying about what your competitor's bid on is almost worthless information. Worry about building your own great list of keywords.

My experience has been that my competitors routinely fail to advertise on great search terms. So trying to follow them is a bad idea.

I always find it fun to use the preview tool and study the competitor's landing pages. (I never click on a competitor's ad)

Not long ago I translated broad search terms for several niches and studied landing pages for the same products in about 15 different languages. That sure was fun.

Ok, wheel - Thanks! - I'm not worried about my competitor's bid. Never said I was. I figured there might be an easy way to know this nice-to-have information... that's all!

There are software packages that promise this ("See your competitor's keywords and ads!"), but that's a lie.

Thanks Eurydice - could you point some of these out? I would like to examine them further and see what added value could be gained... I promise i'll update you with anythings interesting i might find...

What i need more than anything, and cannot find a solution for, is the ability to surf the web from different countries, mainly for market analysis and keyword research.

Poster_boy recommended: (thanks dude)

Well, perhaps not the scalable solution you're looking for... but for select queries, Google's Ad Preview Tool works great:[adwords.google.com ]

Now, this is a tool i find misleading and confusing, because it does not give you an accurate display of google results, hardly for adwords ads, and not at all for local results - which is a major bummer!

I made this test - using this tool I searched for <snip> in google.com/english/US/california/San-Francisco and came up with this:
<snip>
Than i used a free proxy service and got these results:
<snip>

Now do you see what i'm talking about?

When using proxy i got a whole other level of information: local businesses, products, a map... now this is what i'm lokking for - the ability to go LOCAL on every market in the world...

doesn't anybody else here need the same? are all of you pipl marketing from within a certain market to that same very market?

[edited by: buckworks at 1:22 pm (utc) on Apr 6, 2010]
[edit reason] Removed specifics; see TOS [/edit]

pavlovapete:

Not long ago I translated broad search terms for several niches and studied landing pages for the same products in about 15 different languages. That sure was fun.

Wow man... than you might have the solution :-)

Could you PLEASE go into further detail and elaborate? let me in on your fun :-P

Thanks in advance!

Can't really go into detail here; we deal more in abstracts. Check the WebmasterWorld TOS.

Talbatz, you keep hoping somehow, somewhere, there's a tool that will tell you your competitors' keywords (and even their bids.)

It can't be done. No tool can do this.

And if you did have those keywords, it'd be useless to you. Ranking and bids are based on the quality of the page, not the keywords themselves.

You could have ALL of the keywords for your #1 competitor, and she would still show up #1 position and pay only $0.25 per click, while you show up in #7 position and you have to pay $5.00 per click.

Don't chase keywords or bids. Work on improving your page.

Can't really go into detail here; we deal more in abstracts. Check the WebmasterWorld TOS

I read the TOS alright, and I don't see what I did wrong here... i'm not asking him to reveal his core business to me, just point me out... generally and abstractly is fine! :-)

Talbatz, you keep hoping somehow, somewhere, there's a tool that will tell you your competitors' keywords (and even their bids.)

Wrong, I'm not looking for that.

I'm looking for a way to surf from my own house in the holy land, and appear to google as if i was browsing from san francisco, rio dejenero, guadelhara, warsaw and than istanbul!

Now sure there are proxies, but i don't have proxies of my own and free onews suck big time - very slow and hard to connect to... so yeah, i'm looking for a better solution!

It can't be done. No tool can do this.

you know what, i'm not taking NO for an answer (never had :-), so i'm gonna prove you wrong.

Actually, while writing this post i found this website called <snip> that is kind of a free proxy - but they do have proxies in 7 different countries, so it may solve SOME of the problem.

I'm gonna ask them for a trial and i'll try to evalute it further.
Their free proxy is based in SF bay area.

Question: Do you pipl use proxies for research?

[edited by: buckworks at 7:01 pm (utc) on Apr 6, 2010]
[edit reason] Removed specifics; see TOS [/edit]

Mods please fell free to snip anything that is inappropriate.

talbatz,

I have no trade secrets - everything needed to do what I do is mentioned already in this thread.

Have you used the Adwords Preview tool? You can select country/ city/ language?

Have you used Google Translate?

Admittedly I don't use proxies but I appreciate what you are saying about the differences between proxy output and other methods. The other point to make here is that personalisation probably makes absolute statements about position of SERPs including Adwords somewhat meaningless. I want to stress this point - proxy methods are probably not giving you the "direct line into Google's brain" - I'm not sure that exists anymore.

This is why I have made the personal decision to be satisfied with what comes out of the Preview tool. They are not trying to hide stuff from me - they want me to make informed business decisions.

pavlovapete, thank you for taking the time to explain it like you did. I appreciate it!

:-)