Last week, I was updating some bids in my Adwords account and saw a new little icon next the bids on in the keywords view. Although I can’t be certain, it looks like a little key.
Since I didn’t get any notification that there was a new feature, I had no idea what it meant or what it would do. So, being curious, I clicked on it.What resulted was a light box with several different bid levels and associated impressions listed.
That was last week. This week, it now includes estimated clicks and impressions at different maximum bids for keywords that have (I would guess) accumulated enough data to support a projection.
Although interesting as a concept, I am a bit skeptical about the application. For instance, the keywords that I looked at were primarily brand phrases, where my bid levels (one would think) do not need to be very high, given that I have a 10/10 relevancy score, average position of 1 and plenty of budget for the ads to be shown all day long.
The bid simulator, however, suggested some outrageously high bid levels! Here is a screen cap of one of my brand phrases – notice the top bid it recommends is extremely high. Why would I want to risk paying up to $36 per click on a brand term to get an additional 31 impressions?
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- Here’s what the icon looks like.
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- Even though this is a brand phrase, the bid level is really high.
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- Here is the one phrase where the bid level was at the top of the bid estimator scale.
Tags: adwords tools, bid simulator
