Is the only way to determine how much traffic there really is for certain keywords by setting a very high budget and seeing what happens? I'd like to get the company to increase their budget and I'm sure they'd be persuaded if I could say "your ads are only running 4 hours a day" but I'm not sure if it's possible to determine that. Any thoughts?
Not really. But you can find that whether it is running 24 hours or not. To do that, just check yesterday's stats. And the day before's. If you notice that the daily spend is consistently $8 everyday, then the ads are not being shown all the time.
>>> Does AW shut down intermittently during the day or does it just run them til the daily budget is met?
Happens intermittently. The ads are displayed across 24 hours.
>>> Is the only way to determine how much traffic there really is for certain keywords by setting a very high budget and seeing what happens?
Nope. The google traffic estimator is not exactly reliable.
Is the only way to determine how much traffic there really is for certain keywords by setting a very high budget and seeing what happens?Nope. The google traffic estimator is not exactly reliable.
I think vmills means, is the best way to find out how much traffic you can get is to set a very high budget so your ads will definately be shown 24x7 and then see how many impressions/clicks those KWs get, not relying on traffic estimator numbers.
At present, that is one way to find the upper limit of impressions for certain KWs. However, remember that as with anything, there are trends, and some KWs get different total impressions based on day of the week, time of day, day of the month, and month of the year.
If you don't want to take such a plunge (as it can be costly), you could increase your budget 10%, and then see if your KWs received more impressions/clicks over time. If they are, then your ads aren't being shown all the time.
Another way to get a good idea if your ad is showing all the time is to check your 'Recommended Budget' on the 'Edit Campaign Settings' page.
If the recommended budget is higher than your actual budget, then your ads will not be showing all the time.
You can get an idea of how often the ads are showing by looking at the ratio between the recommended budget, and the actual budget. For example if your actual budget is $10.00 per day, and the recommended budget is $20.00 per day, then your ads will be showing for roughly half of the 24 hour day - spaced out over the entire day.
On the other hand, if your recommended budget shows as 'OK', then your ads are probably showing most of the time. (NOTE: If you have many keywords with CTR of 4% and above, though, the 'Budget is OK' message may be inaccurate - and a higher daily budget may be required in order for the ads to show 24/7.)
AWA
Because of the client's limited budget, I trimmed the campaign to the top performing keywords and these have high CTR: from 3.5% to 30%. So if I understand correctly, the recommended budget is probably not accurate for this campaign?
...I trimmed the campaign to the top performing keywords and these have high CTR: from 3.5% to 30%. So if I understand correctly, the recommended budget is probably not accurate for this campaign?
It's hard to make a blanket statement, vmills, especially without being able to see the account. But I'd say there is a very good chance the system that calculates your recommended budget is being 'fooled'. This is because it is using a very moderate CTR in the neighborhood of 2% to calculate how often your ad will be clicked on. And in reality, it is being clicked on at a rate up to 15 times higher.
BTW, another way to test for this is to check your campaign spend day-by-day using the date range tool. If you notice that your daily budget is being hit or exceeded often, then that is a pretty good clue that your budget is too low - and that your ad is not showing 24/7.
AWA
Marek, I wish I were such an Adwords whiz that I could just enter high-performing low-cost keyword right off the bat. The account is fairly new and we've found a few keywords with high CTR which also convert (very important!) and they are around 30-60 cents. I think that's pretty good.
We're also using a big part of the budget to test various keywords, and those are the ones I'll pay more for - for a time. As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with paying $1.50 a click if you can get positive ROI with it. Of course, I'd rather pay 10 cents, and maybe after awhile we'll get there. With this budget though, the testing process is fairly slow. If there's a more efficient way to maximize the ROI of an Adwords campaign with a limited budget, I'm all ears.
On the other hand, if your ROI is positive, as you have said, why do you keep the budget so low?
I often work with small companies on very low budget, however I never limit the daily budget in AdWords. Instead I limit the max. CPC and this usually works fine. Our ad is quite often listed somewhere on page 2 or 3, but it is there all the time, for every query that is important for us. And I know, based on our conversion rate, gross margin and max. CPC, that our ROI is always positive.
Of course, it may depend on a particular market, but I can imagine only few reasons, why to pay big money per click and keep daily budget so low in the same time.
I've tried setting a lower CPC but when I do the CTR plummets. It may just be a difference in markets. Our top converting keywords don't have a lot of search volume but are highly relevant. Maybe on more general terms with huge (relatively speaking) volume, ads on page 2 will still deliver. For the terms I've been dealing with, I just haven't seen that happen--page 2 ads will get no CTR at all.
