How much data should I look at when bidding a kw up or down?
It depends. There are pros and cons to both looking at too much or too little data when determining bids. If you look at too little data, the data that you have gathered may not be very telling of the true performance and could be very noisy. Looking at a lot of data can smooth out the noise and average out the outliers, but it may not reflect the most current bidding landscape. So then what's the optimal amount? This is dependent on the conversion rate and volume that your keywords achieve. If your keywords on average achieve a really low conversion rate and low click volume, you may need to look back months in order to gather enough clicks and conversions to be able to make a bidding decision, versus a high conversion rate, maybe a week or a few days give you enough data. For example, if your keywords achieve around a 1% conversion rate and 10 clicks a day, looking back only at the last 3 days would not be enough data as with that average conversion rate, you’d expect there not to be a conversion in that 30 clicks. All in all, try to use as little data as possible to account for recent market changes, but also make sure you include enough data to account for your conversion rate.
- Sam
Answered: Feb 9, 2010 - 3:53 pm EST What do you think?