? about Googles traffic estimator tool

How accurate is this?

[ucdawg12]

I know the clicks are rarely accurate which I can understand, however I find the cost estimate very misleading. When I want to find out how much I should bid to get my ad its highest rank I use this tool. However when I use it I get a very high max CPC value, but under it a very low average CPC. For example, "widgets" was a 3.97 Max CPC and a .33 average CPC. so I create a campaign around this keyword and use the max cpc, use googles recommended daily budget and when I check in, I find that I have reached the daily budget on a very low number of clicks due to a high average CPC that never went down to its estimate. Now I wouldnt mind it being this high if it would have calculated it accurating and my daily budget would have been much higher so I got more clicks. What is wrong with this? I figure that I will probably hear, oh the average cpc will go down over time to what it was estimated as, but how long will this take, how many clicks? I went over my recommended daily budget by 40 dollars today on only 59 clicks. If the daily budget is too low like this and google cant give me an accurate figure I could be at this high cpc forever.

[dave741]

Traffic estimator tool - very very very inaccurate.

[keywordguru]

Agreed!
Want to find out the true numbers?

Start a campaign with a budget and you'll find out in a day:)

[dave741]

Start a campaign with a budget and you'll find out in a day:)

Unless you run into On Hold - On Trial mess. But then you do not need any estimates anyway.

[patient2all]

very very very inaccurate

Dave, I think you left out several "verys".

The traffic/cost estimator either tells me .05 or something like $11.47 for every adgroup. Experience has told me that something like .16 will keep me in the top 4 positions for any of the keywords.

I think that estimator only works properly for certain very competitive areas with a long history of data. If you're going to go into those sectors, you need to have done prior studies of your own to have a chance at being competitive, not that tool.

patient2all

[mike_ppc]

Let's put it in a different way!
For example: is there any accurate Google estimator?
Take daily budget estimator. You can make the test I made.
I doubled my Maxbid for all keywords and then tried again the recommended budget - THE SAME! - when both number of impressions and CPC should rise (my actual bids are quite low) - so daily budget should about double! (or even more!)
Has anyone found an accurate Google estimator lately?

[patient2all]

For a campaign that's been running 6 months costing on average, $80.00 a day, I suggested .005 as a daily budget and the Budget Estimator said that was "ok". Yesterday's actual spend was $73.70.

The thing is broke.

patient2all

[Eurydice]

Agreed: Estimator doesn't work. For potential clients, I set up an Adgroup within one of my internal test accounts, populate it with KWs, and set it to expire in two or three days. That gives impressions and avg pos, from which one can guess at the amt of competition, amt of daily bid, and level of KW bids.

[patient2all]

Wow Eurydice,

An "internal test account"? What do you mean by that? Do you have to be a GAP to have that or is that something you can cook up yourself or a 3rd party tool? It sounds like an awfully intriguing idea!

patient2all

[Eurydice]

By "internal test account", I mean that we have a number of accounts that are for us, not for any particular client. Set up an account, and then within that, run campaigns for potential clients. $25 or $50 is enough to get good stats. If the client signs up, you've recovered your small investment. When they sign up, create a new account for the client, move the AGs and KWs to it, and go from there.

You can point the clicks anywhere. Yu could use a competitor who already has GAW. They'd be scratching their heads, wondering where the extra click spike came from :-)

This is the only way I know that lets me tell a client what the bidding, positions, and clicks will be like.

[killroy]

I set my max bid to $300, and it recommends $1200... I never spend more then around $50. Is there any point with raising the max spend at this point? Or should I simply ignore it? The frustrating thing for a newbie is, the google docs recommend the tools highly at every turn. If at least they'd admit they are rubish and would tell me to experiment!

SN

[sem4u]

Yes it is inaccurate. I think it is based on a default CTR of 2% but I am not sure. So if you CTR is sky high (or very low) the results will be meaningless.

[mike_ppc]

Eurydice,
How do you move your AGs (excuse my ignorance, what is this?) and KWs (this one I know!) from the test account to client's account?
Is there any "smart" way to do that?
Also, I wonder if there is no possible solution to direct those test clicks somewhere useful ....