Google’s feature set continues to expand with the roll out of the Bid Simulator, We’ve seen this in testing but it’s now being rolled out across accounts so you may see it in yours already, it’s just a small arrow to the right of the bids at keyword level,  here’s what it looks like when one is clicked  :

The calculations in this example are based on a 3 day time window but we’ve seen up to six days in other accounts.

Whilst nothing earth shattering (and of course google have a disclaimer right there saying no guarantees) it does give you some guidance on how changing the bid could potentially affect your traffic volume and costs, although a rocket science degree isn’t needed to see the more you bid, the more traffic you get, the more it costs overall.

It’s a case of knowing what your max viable cost per acquisition is and working to that but at least with this insight you get more transparency on “what if” scenarios than just blindly upping your bid and hoping for the best.

One more tool in the war I guess although some novice users will no doubt be feeling AdWords is slipping away from them in terms of functionality and how to make the best of it as it increases the  options and features on an ongoing basis.