Do You Know The Most Expensive Google AdWords?

If you are an insurance broker or provider using Google AdWords for search engine marketing, you might want to look away now...

According to some new research from a software services provider, insurance keywords such as "car insurance online" are the most searched for on the search engine, indicating that they are also most expensive from a PPC point of view.  

AdWords still accounts for the lions's share of Google's profits, despite its ongoing attempts to diversify its revenue streams.  

Other keenly fought over categories (and thus likely to be the most highly priced terms in the AdWords dictionary) were:

• Loans; for example "student loans", "cash loans" or "best loan rates"
• Mortgages; terms such as "new buyer mortgage" or "cheap remortgage rates"
• Attorney; keywords such as "defense attorney"
• Credit; e.g. "bad credit report"

Together, these top five categories accounted for over 50% of terms searched for on google over the 90-day period analysed.

Of course, it will not come as a surprise to anyone working in the industry that financial services related terms are the most searched for; the study may have been conducted on the US Google site, but the research behaviours it illustrates are also common to the UK market.  Competing in a crowded marketplace for PPC will inevitably drive up costs, but also highlights the value to these players of having a good SEM strategy in place to complement some strategically placed PPC activity.