The accuracy of Googles traffic estimator?

[tcpn8]

I just signed up for an adwords account and have been fiddling around with all the tools. I'm very curious to know how accurate Google's traffic estimator is?

Assuming I provide a relevant ad for my KW and achieve a reasonable CTR is the traffic estimator likely to be a good ball park estimate of clicks?

[Shak]

last I heard, it has/was broken and inteneded to remain that way :)

no kidding

but if Im wrong, please say so

Shak

[tcpn8]

shak, thanks for giving me a heads up. I will make a note though of the estimates just in case.

[andye]

It's particularly inaccurate for keywords where there's no existing ads, in my experience.

hth, a.

[shorebreak]

It's 30%+ off 70% of the time, at the individual keyword level. Strangely enough, though, for a very large keyword set it is only <5% off in aggregate.

[inasisi]

The worst thing about the Guesstimator is the Avg Position. It has almost never predicted it correctly. As result of that the clicks are also off. However we have found the impressions(available only through the API) to be pretty close.

[abbeyvet]

If you are targetting local or non-US areas it is COMPLETELY useless in my experience. I have a good few campaigns targetted only at Ireland and it is of no value at all for them.

[whoisgregg]

I find it more effective and less time consuming to simply start campaigns/ad groups/keywords and find out for myself than waste time with the estimator. Even if it's +/- 5% right half the time, I'll never know it was right or wrong until after I find out for myself anyways. So, what was gained? :)

[AdWordsAdvisor]

last I heard, it has/was broken and inteneded to remain that way :)

no kidding

but if Im wrong, please say so

Oh my. News to me. ;)

I'll pass feedback on from this thread, though. I was so swamped yesterday, I'm sending the Advertiser Feedback report out tonight instead of Thursday. So, I'll paste some of it in right now.

AWA

[bbcarter]

It's 30%+ off 70% of the time, at the individual keyword level. Strangely enough, though, for a very large keyword set it is only <5% off in aggregate.

that means they're applying one generalization to everything, and obviously specific niches vary in many respects.

[robertskelton]

For me it works less than half the time. You can tell when it isn't working, it''ll say you'll get #1 position and no clicks, regardless of keyword and max cpc.

[EvilDan]

my guess is that google gives you an aggregated estimate of the amount of traffic they are prepared to give/offer you

the actual numbers are their special sauce