There is good news for advertisers who use Google Adwords, on Wednesday, the search engine giant announced a new metric in Adwords – top of page bid estimates, with a view to providing additional help in optimizing users’ ads to show above the search results. As is the case with first page bid estimates, the new metric estimates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid required for the users’ ad to appear in the top positions above the search results, on a regular basis.
The top of page bid complements the recently introduced Top vs Side Report segment which allows a user to see how their ads perform above and to the side of Google search results. A few months back, Google chief economist Hal Varian had explained the big difference between when the ad appears in # 1 position above the search results and in the # 1 position on the side of the search results. “On an average, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads appear on the right-hand side,” he had said.
The information in the Top vs Side Report segment helps advertisers optimize their search campaigns by analyzing the relationship between the ad location and their clicks and conversions. Advertisers can use this information along with the new top of page bid estimates to plan their bidding strategy with greater insight.
An important point to be noted is that the top of page bid estimates does not render factors like Quality Score, CPC bid , budget and account settings redundant. While the new metric provides a guide to bid planning, bidding higher than the top of page bid estimate does not guarantee a top ad position. The ad position will still depend on the Quality Score, user and competing advertiser behavior, CPC bid and budge and account settings.
An advertiser can view their top of page bid estimates as below:
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Go to the keywords tab.
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Click the Columns button.
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Select the Customize columns from the drop-down menu.
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Check the Est. top of page bid box and click Save.
When a query exactly matches the users’ keyword, the Est. top of page bid is the estimated CPC bid needed for their ad to appear above the first page of Google search results.
The Est. top of page bid may, in rare cases, exceed $ 100 (USD) and will be denoted as >$100. However, at present, the top of the page bid estimates does not show bids greater than $100. In case a viewer needs need to view the bid in currencies other the USD, they may see the similar annotation for the equivalent of $ 100 USD in their preferred currency.
To gain more insight into how bid changes to specific keywords or ad groups can affect clicks and impressions a user can check the bid simulator. The bid simulator shows the advertising results a user could get if they used a different maximum CPC bid for their keywords or ad group.
The bid simulator estimates the click, cost and impression data that the ads would have received over the last seven days had the user used different bids.
To quote an example, if a user has a maximum CPC bid of USD 1.00 for their keywords and they would like to know what results they would get with a bid of USD 1.50 or USD 1.75, the bid simulator simulates the clicks, cost and impressions they would have seen with these other bids overs a period of last seven days.
It is noteworthy that the bid simulator only applies to the Search Network (Google search and search partners), not to the Display Network.
For more details on the new top of the page bid estimates or any of the other you can visit Adwords Help Center.