During the process of creating a campaign or adding an ad group to a campaign, you'll be selecting keywords for the ad group. You can simply add the keywords, and later set custom options for all or some of them. But if you have many keywords, it may be more efficient to specify custom settings for the keywords while selecting the keywords.

• About Custom Keyword Settings

• Entering Custom Settings

• Examples: Custom Keyword Settings

About Custom Keyword Settings

You can specify custom keyword settings in the Keyword or Ad Group Detail, Keyword page. You can specify custom keyword settings in the Selected Keywords panel on the Choose Keyword page. You can include the following custom settings for each keyword:

• Custom bid. For Sponsored Search, you can specify a custom bid that overrides the ad default group bid. Please refer to the Set Your Ad Group Bid help topic for more information about ad group bidding.

  Note: Sponsored Search custom level bids should be managed at the keyword level.

• Custom URL. Enter the Internet address to be used as the destination URL for this keyword.

• Alternate text. If the title or description of the ad uses the Insert Keyword feature, the alternate text - not keyword – is inserted in the ad.

• Advanced match type. Enable or disable the advanced match type for the keyword, if Sponsored Search is selected.

For more information about each of these settings, see Keyword Details.

Entering Custom Settings

To enter a keyword with custom settings, enter a continuous text string in the Selected Keywords panel on the Choose Keyword page. Use this format for the text string:

keyword**custom bid**custom URL**alternate text**advanced match-Y/N

Examples: Custom Keyword Settings

Example: All settings specified

Here's a sample text string specifying all custom keyword settings:

hawaii trip**1.75**http://travel.yahoo.com**trips to Hawaii**N

Table 2.

Example: All but one setting specified

If you omit a setting, be sure to include the asterisks that would normally precede and follow the setting – without intervening spaces. In this example all keyword settings are defined, except the custom bid:

hawaii trip****http://travel.yahoo.com**trips to Hawaii**Y

The default bid will be used for this keyword. Notice that **** indicates the location for the custom bid and that no spaces are used between asterisks.

Table 3.

Example: Two settings omitted

If you omit two settings, be sure to include the asterisks that would normally precede and follow each setting – without intervening spaces. In this example, there's no custom bid or URL for this keyword, but alternate text is defined and the advanced match type is set to On (Y).

hawaii trip******trips to Hawaii**Y

In this case, six asterisks – without intervening spaces - indicate the omission of two consecutive settings.

Table 4.

Example: One setting specified

In this example only the custom bid is set. The omission of the other settings is indicated by six asterisks – without intervening spaces.

car**0.85******

Table 5.

Example: Omitted ** at end

If you omit settings that are the last in the text string you don't need to include asterisks to indicate the omission. This text string sets only the custom bid. But because all settings after the custom bid are omitted, you don't need to include **.

car**0.85

Table 6.

To learn more about keywords, or editorial guidelines, see:

• Keyword Details

• Edit Existing Keywords

• Set Keyword Bids

• Sponsored Search Editorial Guidelines

• Set Keyword Bids

• Minimum Bids Not Met