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I'm surprised this article didn't mention Google's Bid Simulator, which allows you to see a very good estimate for the number of clicks you can receive for a given keyword/creative pair (or adgroup, campaign) at bids you're currently not using:

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2470105?hl=en

More speculatively, Keyword Planner allows you to add a bunch of keywords with bids to your account and see what kind of traffic you might expect:

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2999770?hl=en

Obviously this is less accurate since you don't have a lot of account history with these keywords, you haven't selected creatives yet, etc.

Disclaimer: I've worked a bit on all of these tools.




Bid simulator is nice, but what I really wanted to highlight was the existence of profit maxima and the fact that it can be determined experimentally.

In retrospect, Bid simulator is probably the best thing to use for a starting estimate of the keyword profit optimum (if you don't have data and just use your global conversion rate across all keywords.)

Obviously google has the MOST information and is in the best position to optimize on advertisers behalf, but among SEMs I trust and respect, I've found that there tends to be a distrust for how Google applies the information and a belief that despite the inferior information, a more hands on approach tends to outperform Google's built in tools.

For example, Google doesn't use the keyword when determining what ad to show in its ad rotation optimization. http://searchengineland.com/optimize-for-conversions-using-t...




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