Ask HN: How accurate is Google Adword's Traffic Estimator?

I have been doing paid search for a couple of years and have had different results when comparing the Traffic Estimator to Adwords results:<p>The most common outcome I find is the estimator tool shows more traffic and a lower cost per click than actual adwords results. I have even had the cost per click off by 40% more than the estimator tool.<p>The problem with the tool is there are too many variables that the tool can not account for. Other than cost and keyword, you have to deal with the quality score that looks at the ad you write, the landing page the ad is pointing to and click-through-rate (ctr).<p>In the SEM industry, the rule of thumb is to take a small amount of money and test paid search. It is the only way to get a good idea on the environment you will be competing in.

Here are a couple tips:<p>- Use the keyword tool instead of traffic estimator: <a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal" rel="nofollow">https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal</a><p>- Look at the difference between exact, phrase and broad matches. (On Keyword tool)<p>- Rumor has it Google changes the broadness of broad match to suit their needs. I have heard of "Bed Frame" broad match showing ads for "mattress" Therefore the broad match number is probably higher than reality.<p>- The country settings seems mainly useless.<p>- The numbers returned are rounded to certain fixed values which seem to spread out in a logarithmic scale. So the higher the estimate, the less accurate.

MarketSamurai should give you a wealth of information about your intended keyword.<p>(Disc - no affiliation to the product, i just use it a lot!)

I've found that most of the time, the Google Traffic Estimate usually OVERESTIMATES how much traffic each keyword get. For example, I have the #2 google spot for a food keyword. I get about 1,500 visitors a month from Google for that keyword, but the traffic estimate tool estimates "74,000" searches for that keyword a month. So if 74,000 is really accurate, only 1,500 are clicking the second result

Not that accurate -- a better method is to use the Google keyword tool and numbers you have internally on response rates. You will get a more accurate range that way.<p>Of course, relevancy of the ad to the keyword is the critical factor. If your ad or service is not appropriate to the keyword then you cannot expect a good response rate.

1. You select the area (country, city, whatever) you want to target.<p>2. Take the numbers with a grain of salt. They're good for directional or relative comparisons (same KW in different parts of the world, or KW vs KW) but by no means present an absolute measure of demand.

A year ago it wasn't extremely accurate. When I left there was a project underway to significantly improve it, but I'm not sure if that happened.

Great question. I'm wondering the same about Facebook.