Lesson 7 of 7 · 9 min read · intermediate
Keywords, verticals and geos
What you buy traffic for matters as much as where you buy it. How arbitrage buyers pick keywords, verticals and countries, and the limits on each.
Two campaigns on the same platform with the same budget can produce opposite results because one is about car insurance in the United States and the other is about phone wallpapers in a low-income market. The first has advertisers queueing to pay for each click. The second has almost none. Choosing the keyword, the vertical and the country is choosing how much money is available on the sell side before a single ad runs.
Why some keywords pay more
A search ad click is worth what the winning advertiser expects to earn from it. That depends on two things: how much a customer is worth, and how likely the searcher is to become one. An insurer may earn from a policyholder for years, so it can pay a lot for one enquiry. A recipe site earns pennies from a visit. Keywords with strong commercial intent in high-value industries attract many bidders in the ad auction, and that pushes up what the feed pays.
A taxi rank outside an airport and one outside a village hall can have the same cars and the same drivers. The airport fares are larger because the journeys are longer and the passengers are in a hurry. Keywords work the same way: the price follows the value of the journey that starts there.
The usual verticals
| Vertical | Why advertisers pay | Typical audience | Policy and risk notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insurance (car, home, life, health) | Long customer lifetime, intense competition | Adults, often 35 and over | Counts as a financial product on Meta; accuracy of claims is closely checked |
| Finance (loans, cards, banking, investing) | High value per customer | Broad adult | Special ad category rules; some products are a restricted vertical or barred outright |
| Home services (roofing, plumbing, solar, windows) | Large one-off jobs, local advertisers | Homeowners | Seasonal and local; avoid implying government schemes that do not exist |
| Health (devices, dental, clinics, senior care) | High-value treatments and devices | Often 50 and over | Strict limits on medical claims and on wording that implies a condition |
| Automotive (new cars, leasing, tyres) | Large purchases, strong brand budgets | Broad adult | Trademark rules on brand names; price claims must be real |
| Education (degrees, courses, training) | High tuition value per enrolment | Younger adults and career changers | Outcome and salary claims must be supportable; demand follows term dates |
From keyword idea to search terms on the page
On a related-search page, the visitor sees a short list of related search terms and chooses one. Those terms come from Google's own suggestions and, where the contract allows, from terms the publisher proposes through the terms parameter. Publisher-supplied terms are often called forced keywords.
- Start with the articleDecide what the page is genuinely about. The terms must be relevant to that content.
- List what a reader would search nextSomeone reading about roof repair costs might next search for local roofers, roof replacement quotes or roofing materials.
- Check the terms are permittedRemove brand names you have no right to use, restricted categories and anything aimed at a specific group of people.
- Measure each termKeyword-level reporting shows which terms are chosen and what each earns. Drop terms nobody selects.
- Keep ad, article and terms on one subjectIf the ad is about heating bills, the article is about insulation and the terms are about personal loans, the chain is broken and the page is in breach.
Geos: the same keyword is worth different amounts
The industry sorts countries into tiers by advertiser spending. Tier 1 usually means the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the wealthier parts of Western Europe. Clicks there earn the most and cost the most. Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries are cheaper to buy in and pay less. The tiers are a convention among buyers, not an official list.
Tier 1 countries
- Highest advertiser demand and feed payouts
- Most expensive traffic and most competing buyers
- A mistake costs more per click
- Strictest privacy and consumer law
Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries
- Cheaper traffic, so testing costs less
- Fewer advertisers, so some keywords show few or no ads
- Language and local relevance decide results
- Feeds may not support every country
Cheap traffic in a small market only helps if advertisers are present. Coverage measures how often the feed has ads to show for a search. In a country or language with thin demand, coverage falls and a visitor who picks a term may see no sponsored results at all, which earns nothing. Always check coverage and RPC for a country before judging its low click prices as a bargain.
- Target precisely. Use Geo-targeting to buy only in countries your feed supports, and write the page in the language of that country.
- Respect local law. Visitors in the European Union and the United Kingdom bring GDPR and consent duties with them. A consent management platform is part of the set-up, not an extra.
- Watch for mismatches. Traffic that claims to be from one country but behaves like another is a warning sign of proxy or invalid traffic.
- Mind the calendar. Each vertical has its own season, covered in the economics track.
Key takeaways
- Keyword value follows advertiser economics: customer value multiplied by likelihood to convert.
- Insurance, finance, home services, health, automotive and education pay well and carry the tightest platform and feed restrictions.
- Related search terms must be relevant to the page; Google forbids choosing terms to generate particular ads or to target specific groups.
- Tier 1 countries pay most and cost most; cheaper countries can have poor coverage with few or no ads to show.
- Ad, article and search terms must stay on one subject, in the right language, for a country the feed supports.
Questions people ask
What are the best verticals for search arbitrage?
The verticals with the highest advertiser demand are insurance, finance, home services, health, automotive and education, because each customer is worth a lot to the advertiser. They are also the most restricted by ad platforms and feeds. The best vertical for a given operator is one the feed permits, that they can write accurate content about, and where they can buy relevant traffic.
What are Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries in media buying?
They are informal groupings of countries by advertising value. Tier 1 usually covers the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and wealthy Western European markets, where clicks earn and cost the most. Tier 2 and Tier 3 are progressively cheaper markets with lower payouts. There is no official list, and each network or feed may draw the lines differently.
Can I choose which keywords appear on my related search page?
Partly. Google generates related search terms itself, and publishers with permission can suggest terms through the terms parameter. Suggested terms must be relevant to the page content, must not be chosen to trigger particular ads or inflate clicks, and must not target demographic groups. Google also limits how many terms and blocks a page may show under its restricted access features.
Why does a cheap country sometimes make no money?
Because revenue needs advertisers. In a market or language with few advertisers bidding, the feed often has no ads to show, so coverage is low and many searches earn nothing. The clicks that do happen pay less. Low traffic prices only help if the feed's coverage and revenue per click in that country are high enough to exceed them.