Traffic Estimates - Limited to selected Geography?

Question on estimates

[howiejs]

I setup a new campaign set to only ONE state/city in the U.S.

When I run the traffic estimate it returns a HUGE number --- is this projected for the whole U.S.? or just limited to what my specific state/city preference?

[mike_ppc]

I don't think anybody knows EXACTLY how this tool works.
What most people could tell you is they don't trust estimator's figures.

The only solution is just give it a try and see what happens.

[eWhisper]

This has been an issue for quite some time. Many times the estimator works okay for a geo area, other times, I think it's diving percentages instead of multiplying them (i.e. If LA is 3.6% of the population, and there are 1000 searches for widgets, then 36 of them are from LA (1000x0.036=36) is one way it could work. It seems that the estimator is instead doing 1000/0.036=27777 searches for these queries).

I had a call with the tech team a while ago about this issue when I brought it up, and they fixed it for the queries I was looking at, but there are still many times that the numbers are way off.

I'd write to Google from inside your account and detail exactly what geographic area and queries you're doing that brings up the improper numbers. In the email, ask for it to be forwarded to the AdWords tech dpt as it's a bug in the system and that you don't want the standard 'cut and paste' reply, but instead want the email passed on.