I had a similar issue, where our client’s brand name suddenly had a high required bid (for page 1), despite there being only one other advert, a healthy clickthrough rate, and an (obviously) relevant advert and page.

Their response makes no sense to me at all:

I just wanted to let you know that I heard back from engineers about the issue with the high first page bid for [brand name], and they have confirmed that unfortunately this high bid is expected behavior.

The engineer said that this bid is expected because the bulk of the impressions for the customer/keyword are coming from Google.com traffic, but the majority of clicks are coming from search partner traffic.

The first page bid estimate is only for Google.com traffic. The 6.92% CTR that we are seeing is for both Google and search network traffic. For Google.com it is much lower. The launch does more dynamic disabling, so the keyword will continue to serve on partner traffic where it performs well and is no longer serving on Google.com.

I was under the impression that the Quality Score had always been based on Google only, and not its partners, so this doesn’t really explain why a very good keyword has suddenly become a relatively poor one.

I’ve asked Google to elaborate on this…

I had a similar issue, where our client’s brand name suddenly had a high required bid (for page 1), despite there being only one other advert, a healthy clickthrough rate, and an (obviously) relevant advert and page.

Their response makes no sense to me at all:

I just wanted to let you know that I heard back from engineers about the issue with the high first page bid for [brand name], and they have confirmed that unfortunately this high bid is expected behavior.

The engineer said that this bid is expected because the bulk of the impressions for the customer/keyword are coming from Google.com traffic, but the majority of clicks are coming from search partner traffic.

The first page bid estimate is only for Google.com traffic. The 6.92% CTR that we are seeing is for both Google and search network traffic. For Google.com it is much lower. The launch does more dynamic disabling, so the keyword will continue to serve on partner traffic where it performs well and is no longer serving on Google.com.

I was under the impression that the Quality Score had always been based on Google only, and not its partners, so this doesn’t really explain why a very good keyword has suddenly become a relatively poor one.

I’ve asked Google to elaborate on this…

However, the same keyword in a phrase does work.
Unfortunately, I can’t attach an image to illustrate keyword performance. Thus I would have to describe it.

electrician Bid is below first page bid estimate of $6.75 -
$3.89 0 21 0.00% – – 1.7
electrician Kent $3.89 0 3 0.00% – – 5.0
electrician Kent WA $3.89 1 7 14.28% $3.70 $3.70 2.3

It definitely makes sense to revise the advertising strategy and move your budget towards the tale

However, the same keyword in a phrase does work.
Unfortunately, I can’t attach an image to illustrate keyword performance. Thus I would have to describe it.

electrician Bid is below first page bid estimate of $6.75 -
$3.89 0 21 0.00% – – 1.7
electrician Kent $3.89 0 3 0.00% – – 5.0
electrician Kent WA $3.89 1 7 14.28% $3.70 $3.70 2.3

It definitely makes sense to revise the advertising strategy and move your budget towards the tale