I had a reader email me yesterday to ask: “Do misspelled keywords still work?” The short answer is yes. I went back to try to quantify just how well they do work, and for one campaign I found a single misspelled keyword had generated $16,189 in just the last 12 months! That’s revenue that would have been missed if not for adding misspelled keywords to the campaign. So I would say they definitely are still working.
Even though services like Google show the “did you mean” line with the correct spelling of the searchers keyword, your ad still runs on the initial misspelled search. That search is usually less crowded than the main keyword. Google, Yahoo and MSN all recommends you should add misspelled keywords to catch more impressions and clicks.
How to run misspelled keywords.
I like to break out misspellings into their own adgroup, or sometimes even their own campaign. Keep in mind misspelled keywords in ads are technically not allowed, so your quality score might be lower for these groups because the keyword won’t exactly match the ad/landing page. That’s why its good to separate them from your main groups or campaigns.
Misspellings can run on any PPC service, but they seem to work best on Adcenter. (I’m not sure what that says about MSN users). The percentage of misspelled keyword clicks that actually lead to conversions is higher than Google or Yahoo.
How to find misspelled keywords.
Some services like MSN Adcenter have their own free tool.
If you search for “free misspelled keyword” there are many online tools that will generate common misspellings.
SEObook has a great example here.
I’ve been using Keyword Discovery for over 3 years now, and it seems to be the best at finding misspellings that actually convert. The $16,000 keyword I found was generated by the program.
Misspelled keywords are no secret, they have been working for years and should continue to work in the future. So don’t overlook this important staple of any pay per click campaign.
The MSN AdCenter tool is really good.
Wow that is one profitable misspelled keyword. I agree that Keyword Discovery is a very valuable tool. I often recommend it for keyword research. You can also go after misspellings quite easily with seo. Again there is far less competition.
I think misspelled keywords can be very valuable as long as you find the right one, but for me… I really like the misspelled domain names that people popularly type in, I think those can hit it off bigger than the misspelled words. You never know if in the future the search engines get even more smarter at detecting misspelled keywords.
misspelled keywords are incredibly cheap thats why it makes a good return..
I love the Keyword Discovery tool, It is the best one.
Misspelled keywords can be a huge pay off, but I think as the search engines get smarter, misspelled keywords will be less profitable. I think misspelled domain names can be alot more powerful, I know there are alot of domain names that are popular, that are easy to misspell. I know myself.. that in the past I’ve mistyped a domain name directly.
Till then,
Jean
I tried misspelled keywords on Google with some success. I’ll give a shot on MSN. Thanks for great tip!