Search Engine Journal

Last week’s new release of AdWords API has a feature that many have been waiting for: “First Page Bid Estimates”. This feature approximates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid needed for your ad to reach the first page of Google search results when a search query exactly matches your keyword. The estimate is based on the Quality Score and current advertiser competition for that keyword.

Google states:

“First page bid estimates are intended to give you greater insight with which to plan your bidding strategy. Meeting your first page bid is not a guarantee of placement. Ad placement will still be dependent on Quality Score, your cost-per-click (CPC) bid, your budget and account settings, and user and advertiser behavior.”

Although Google does not guarantee placement, the new API will however greatly improve the ability of third party bid management tools that make use of the quality score and first page bid estimate, to determine the necessary bidding criteria for a successful rank based placement.

With the addition of these two fields, third party tools should be able to bid more accurately and less frequently and achieve a better result.

Al Costanzo is the President of Dynnamic Software and PPC SaaS, one such third party tool that will make use of these new fields in the Google API.