What is keyword bidding, and how do I bid on keywords in Google Ads?

Under manual bidding, a bid sits at one of two levels.

• The ad group’s default bid. One max. CPC for the whole ad group, entered when you create it. Google defines it as the bid that applies to every keyword in the ad group without an individual bid, and calls it the easiest way to manage your CPCs.
• A keyword’s own bid. Set a bid on one keyword and it overrides the default: that bid is used whenever the keyword triggers your ad.

So a keyword with no bid of its own moves when the default moves, and a keyword with its own stays where you put it. To hand one back to the default, delete its bid and leave the field blank. Bid adjustments sit on top of both levels, and a later section covers them. The ad groups guide covers what else an ad group holds.

Whether a keyword’s bid is yours to set depends on the campaign’s bid strategy. Only one leaves it to you.

• Manual CPC lets you manage your maximum CPC bids yourself. Google suggests it where you’d like to steer the bids of individual ad groups, keywords or placements.
• Maximize clicks sets your max. CPC bids to bring the most clicks within your budget. Google says it isn’t possible to set individual CPC bids with it, but you can set a maximum CPC bid for the whole campaign. That maximum CPC bid limit is a cap: it helps where your CPCs run higher than you want, and Google warns that a limit set too low can keep the strategy from its goal.
• Target impression share takes a Max CPC bid limit too, a cap on the bids the strategy sets.
• Smart Bidding, which is Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value, sets a bid for every query at the time of the auction. Google says that unlike Manual CPC, there’s no need to update bids for specific ad groups or keywords.

Enhanced CPC used to sit between manual and automated bidding. Google says it is no longer available for Search and Display campaigns as of the week of March 31, 2025, and that a campaign left on it is effectively using Manual CPC. Several of Google’s own bidding pages still describe it.

To see or change a campaign’s strategy, open the campaign, select Settings, open Bidding and select Change bid strategy. The Smart Bidding guide sets manual bidding beside the automated strategies. The rest of this guide is about Manual CPC, where the keyword bid is yours.

For one keyword, select the bid amount in its Max. CPC column and type a new one. For several at once:

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords.
2. 02Tick the keywords whose bid you want to change.
3. 03Select Edit, then Change max. CPC bids.
4. 04On the page that opens, set a new bid, increase or decrease the bids you have, or raise them to the first page or top of page CPC. Leave the amount blank to use the ad group’s default bid.
5. 05Select Apply.

To change an ad group’s default bid, go to Campaigns › Ad groups, select the pencil in the Default max. CPC column, enter a new amount and select Save. For several ad groups, tick them, select Edit, then Change bids.

Google says the recommendations in your account can point at keywords that are candidates for a bid change: increased bids to capture more clicks, and decreased bids to lower your costs. The optimization score guide covers how to judge a recommendation before you apply it.

Google says there’s no single recommended bid amount that works for everyone. The right bid, it says, depends on your campaign type, the cost of your keywords and the success of your keywords. Its instruction is one sentence: set your bid by thinking about how much an ad click is worth to you.

That is the whole sum: what a sale brings you, times the share of clicks that become a sale, is the most a click can cost before it loses money. Google’s shop counts what it makes from a sale, not the sale’s price. An account that reports conversion value usually holds what each sale took in, so the sum takes one more step:

• What a click brought. Divide Conv. value by Clicks. That is a sale’s value times the share of clicks that bought, in one figure. Where your conversions carry no value, use what one is worth to you, times Conversions divided by Clicks.
• The return you need. If 40% of a sale is left after your costs, each $1 of ads has to bring $2.50 of sales to pay for itself. The Target ROAS guide works that out.
• The most a click can cost. The first figure divided by the second. A maximum CPC above it can lose money on every click it wins.

With no conversions to work from, Google’s advice is plainer. If you’re unsure what bid to start with, it suggests a max. CPC bid of US$1, which it says many advertisers start at. Then see how many clicks the ads bring and whether those clicks lead to business results, and re-evaluate your bids regularly, since traffic is always changing.

What a click is worth is your side of a bid. Google shows the other side, what a bid buys, in two places on the Search keywords table.

The first is three estimates for each keyword, in columns you add from Attributes: Est. first page bid, Est. top of page bid and Est. first pos. bid. Each is the bid you likely need for your ad to show anywhere on the first page of results, among the top ads, or first among the ads, on a search that exactly matches the keyword. Google calls them a guide and no guarantee of placement. It says the top of page and first position estimates aren’t available for campaigns using automated bidding or ad scheduling.

An ad under its first page estimate can still appear, Google says, but is less likely to appear on the first page. The Status column has a reason named for it, Below first page bid estimate, which Google explains as a keyword that isn’t currently showing ads on the first page, likely due to Ad Rank. The Ad Rank guide reads a campaign’s keywords against the estimates, with the quality behind each.

The second is the bid simulator, an icon in the Max. CPC column. It estimates what your results could have been over the previous 7 days at different bids: the clicks, cost, impressions, conversions and conversion value the keyword would have had. Google’s example is a keyword bidding $1, shown at $1.50 and at $0.75.

• What it rests on. Data from ad auctions, with Quality Score, keyword traffic and the competition taken into account, and any active bid adjustments.
• Where else it is. In the Default max. CPC column on the Ad groups table for an ad group’s bid, and in the Budget column on the Campaigns table for a whole campaign. You can also add the bid simulator columns to the keywords table to read several keywords at once.
• When it’s grayed out. Where the keyword is new or took few clicks in the last 7 days, where the campaign reached or nearly reached its daily budget in those days, and where the campaign has an experiment running or ended within the last 8 days.
• What it leaves out. The conversion columns appear only with conversion tracking and a minimum number of conversions in the last week. Google says the simulator doesn’t predict the future.

A keyword you don’t run yet has no estimate and no simulator of its own. Keyword Planner, in the Tools menu, gives the market’s figures in their place. Two of its historical metrics are bids:

• Top of page bid (low range). The lower range bid, an approximation of the 20th percentile, that advertisers have historically paid for the keyword’s top of page bid.
• Top of page bid (high range). The higher range bid, an approximation of the 80th percentile.

Google calls the pair bid range statistics. They take into account the bids that put an ad among the ads at the top of the first page, for the location and Search Network settings you chose, and show bid information from the last 30 days. A keyword with limited bid history may show none.

Read them as what other advertisers bid, not as what you should. Google says the ranges can help you choose an effective bid, and adds that showing at the top rests on a combination of bid, Quality Score and other factors. So set them beside what a click is worth to you. Where even the low range is above that figure, the top of the page will be hard to afford at your numbers.

You can filter keyword ideas by either range: Google’s example is ideas where bids under $1 may be enough to reach the top of the page. The planner’s forecast page also shows a default bid you can move to see how the keywords might perform with higher or lower bids. The keyword research guide covers the rest of the planner. Google sets the two tools apart this way: the bid simulator works from your own campaign, including your Quality Score, and Keyword Planner from traffic patterns across all advertisers.

For a campaign on Manual CPC, set each bid between two figures: what a click is worth, and what a place costs.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords and set the date range to the last 30 days.
2. 02Select the columns icon above the table, then Modify columns. From Attributes add Est. first page bid and Est. top of page bid, and select Apply.
3. 03Read each keyword’s Max. CPC beside its Avg. CPC and its two estimates.
4. 04Work out what a click brought: Conv. value divided by Clicks, for the campaign’s own row on the Campaigns table and for each keyword that has converted.
5. 05Divide each by the return you need. That is the most a click can cost. A keyword with no conversion yet takes its campaign’s figure.
6. 06Lower a bid that is above its figure.
7. 07Under it, read the estimates. A better place is worth buying where its estimate is under the figure and, for a keyword with no sales of its own, no more than the campaign’s Avg. CPC.

• The bid is the ceiling, and the auction sets the price. [solid wood bookcase] bids $2.60 and paid $2.11 a click on average. All five paid less than they bid.
• Two keywords bid under the first page. [corner bookcase] bids $0.80 against an estimate of $1.05, and [bookcase] $1.20 against $2.90.
• Two reach the first page and bid under the top. [oak bookcase] and [cheap bookcase] each sit between their two estimates.

An estimate is the price of a place. Whether to pay it depends on what a click is worth, which takes the campaign’s own row and three more columns.

The return a click is held to is the example’s choice. Use your own, from your margin. No bid in the table is above its figure, and no click cost more than it, so nothing here is to be lowered. The question for each keyword is whether a better place is worth its price:

• Raise [corner bookcase] to the first page. Its 9 clicks say nothing of their own yet, so it takes the campaign’s $2.96. The first page takes an estimated $1.05: under that, and under the $1.75 the campaign’s clicks cost now.
• Raise [oak bookcase] to the top of the page. Its own clicks brought $12.65 each, so it can pay up to $2.66, and the top of the page takes an estimated $1.65. Its 4 conversions are a thin figure, but with one sale fewer the most it could pay is $1.99, still over the estimate.
• Leave [cheap bookcase]. Its 60 clicks and no sale aren’t yet a reason to lower it: at the campaign’s rate, that many clicks bring nothing about one time in 7. But it has spent $67.20, more than the $54.50 a conversion costs the campaign, so it hasn’t earned a dearer place either.
• Fix [bookcase]’s quality, not its bid. The first page would take $2.90: nearly all of the $2.96 a click can cost, and well over the $1.75 the campaign pays, on a keyword whose 22 clicks sold nothing. Google says a very high first page estimate may mean the keyword’s Quality Score is poor, and this one’s is 3. The low Quality Score guide covers the fix.
• Leave [solid wood bookcase]. It bids over both estimates and could pay up to $3.75. Before bidding more, open its bid simulator and see what a higher bid would have brought.

Make the two raises with Edit, then Change max. CPC bids, which can raise ticked keywords to the first page or top of page CPC. A raise to an estimate can be a large step, and [corner bookcase]’s is nearly a third. Read the keyword again once it has a week or two of clicks at the new bid.

Google’s page on evaluating bids, which recommends conversion tracking first, names two cases:

• A low average CPC with a high conversion rate. Where a keyword’s clicks are cheap and each converts well, Google says you may try increasing its max. CPC bid.
• A high average CPC with a low conversion rate. Where the clicks are dear and seldom convert, you may try reducing it. Google says that could improve your return on low-performing keywords and free up part of your budget for more valuable ones.

Its advice on how is to change bids in small increments, then look for changes in the keyword’s clicks and conversions before editing again.

Rule out two things before a bid moves. A keyword with few clicks can look bad by luck: the keyword guide sets a keyword beside the rest of its campaign and tells a real gap from noise. And a low position isn’t always a bid problem. The same page says it’s possible to improve your ad’s position without increasing costs: the higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the less you pay for a given position. The Ad Rank guide covers that route.

A bid adjustment is a percentage increase or decrease in your bids, applied on top of the keyword’s bid. Google’s first example is a $1 max CPC raised 20% for mobile devices, which bids $1.20 there. The kinds its page lists, each with its range:

• Device: computers, tablets or mobile devices, on a campaign or an ad group, from −100% to +900%. A decrease of 100% opts out of the device.
• Location: on a campaign, from −90% to +900%.
• Ad scheduling: on a campaign with a custom ad schedule, from −90% to +900%.
• Your data segments, demographics and calls: past visitors on a list, an age range or a gender, and call ads, each from −90% to +900%.

Set more than one and they are typically multiplied together. A device adjustment on an ad group is used in place of the campaign’s for the same device, unless the campaign’s is a 100% decrease. Where two location adjustments cover one place, only the most specific is used. Combined, adjustments can’t raise a bid by more than 900% or lower it by more than 90%.

They are set where the thing adjusted is listed: locations, ad schedule, audiences and demographics under Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content, and devices under Campaigns › Insights and reports › When and where ads showed, with the pencil in the Bid adj. column.

Under Smart Bidding, Google says you don’t need manual bid adjustments, and that one made to a Smart Bidding strategy won’t be supported. The targeting guide covers which strategy uses which adjustment, the ad schedule guide hours and days, and the location targeting guide places.

A manual bid is a figure somebody has to keep right, for every keyword, as prices move. Google’s pages say when it thinks that stops paying:

• When you’re unsure which keywords pay. If you’re not sure which keywords are most profitable, or don’t have time to devote to managing manual bids, Google says Maximize clicks is probably a better fit.
• When you can’t keep up. Its example for automated bidding is wanting more conversions at a CPA goal without the time to set a max. CPC for each keyword. It says automated bidding takes the heavy lifting and guesswork out of setting bids.
• When the search matters more than the keyword. Smart Bidding sets a bid for every query, and Google lists what it reads for each one: device, location, time of day, remarketing list, language and operating system.

None of the pages read for this guide gives a number of keywords, or a spend, at which to switch. What decides it is whether the campaign has conversions for the bidding to learn from, which the Smart Bidding guide covers. When you do change a campaign’s strategy, Google offers Save as experiment beside Save, which runs the new strategy against the old one before you commit. The experiments guide reads the result.

Goldbeater reads every enabled keyword’s bid every day: the bid the keyword bids with, its own or its ad group’s default, beside Google’s estimates for it and what its campaign did over the last 30 days.

A keyword bid too low to reach the first page is a keyword in a Manual CPC campaign whose maximum CPC is under Google’s first page estimate. Goldbeater raises the finding where the campaign is at least as efficient as the median of your other campaigns over the 30 days, and already pays the estimate or more for a click on average. So the first page costs no more than the campaign’s clicks do now. The keyword needn’t have had a click. One that has is held to its own figures too: Goldbeater leaves a keyword that converted at a worse price than that median, or that has spent what a conversion costs its campaign and brought none. A bid of the currency’s smallest amount is left alone, as parked on purpose.

The finding reads low. Goldbeater drafts the bid at the estimate, where that is no more than double today’s bid, and you can set it anywhere up to double before you approve it. The change sets the keyword’s own bid and leaves the ad group’s default where it is.

That is the marked keyword from the tables above: its $0.80, its $1.05 estimate, its 9 clicks and the campaign’s $1.75 a click are the tables’ figures, and 8.04 against 4.75 is the campaign’s return beside the other campaigns’. [bookcase] bids under its first page estimate too, and Goldbeater raises no finding for it: at $2.90, the first page costs more than the campaign pays for a click.

Six more checks read a bid, each shown or described in the guide about it:

• A keyword bid too low to show among the top ads. A Manual CPC keyword bidding at or over its first page estimate and under its top of page one, in a campaign with five or more conversions in 30 days that passes the same two tests against that estimate, where the keyword itself isn’t losing money. In the tables it’s [oak bookcase], and the Ad Rank guide shows the finding.
• A keyword converting well, losing searches to ad rank. A keyword with five or more conversions in 30 days that lost 20% or more of its searches to rank, converting at least as well as its campaign and not under its campaign’s target, in a campaign at least as efficient as the median of your others. Under Manual CPC, Goldbeater drafts its bid 20% higher. The Auction insights guide shows it.
• A keyword’s clicks getting dearer while its campaign’s hold. A keyword that spent $20 or more in its last 4 weeks, whose cost per click rose against its own earlier weeks and against its campaign’s other keywords, each by more than its weeks’ own swings explain. The finding is advice, and the keyword guide covers it.
• A bid limit holding your automated bidding back. A campaign that spent $20 or more in 30 days whose bid strategy Google reports limited by its bid limit. The finding is advice, since the limit is a price you set, and the Smart Bidding guide covers it.
• A device converting far below the rest of its campaign. A device that, on $20 or more in 30 days, bought under half the conversions its spend would have at the campaign’s other devices’ rate, by more than chance explains. Under manual bidding, Maximize clicks or Target CPA, Goldbeater drafts the bid adjustment that halves the device’s bids. The targeting guide shows it.
• A product group bid that lets a click cost more than it can earn. The sum above, for Shopping: a product group in a Standard Shopping campaign on Manual CPC that spent $20 or more in 30 days, whose maximum CPC is above the most a click on it returns, with its conversions taken at the most chance allows, where your conversion value is real. The finding is advice, and the Shopping ads guide covers it.

Every line Goldbeater checks is in the audit checklist.

What is keyword bidding?

Choosing, for each keyword, the most you’re willing to pay when someone searches on it and clicks your ad. Google calls that the keyword’s maximum cost-per-click bid, or max CPC. Under Manual CPC you set it yourself, as a default for an ad group or on a single keyword. Automated strategies set the bids for you.

What is a max CPC bid in Google Ads?

The highest amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. Google says a click won’t cost more than the max. CPC bid you set, and that you’ll often be charged less, sometimes much less. What you actually pay shows as an average in the Avg. CPC column.

How do I set a max CPC in Google Ads?

In a campaign on Manual CPC, go to Search keywords under Audiences, keywords, and content, and select the bid in a keyword’s Max. CPC column. For several keywords, tick them, select Edit, then Change max. CPC bids. An ad group’s default bid is in the Default max. CPC column on the Ad groups table. On Maximize clicks you can set one maximum CPC bid limit for the campaign.

How much should I bid on a keyword?

Google says there’s no single recommended bid, and to set yours from how much a click is worth to you. Its example: a shop that makes $10 a sale, where 1 visit in 10 buys, breaks even at a max. CPC of $1 and should bid below it. If you’re unsure where to start, Google suggests a max. CPC bid of US$1.

Why did a click cost more than my max. CPC?

Google names three things that can take a bid past the max. CPC you set: bid adjustments, manual bidding for search partners, and Enhanced CPC. A bid adjustment is applied on top of the bid, so a +20% adjustment for mobile devices turns a $1 bid into $1.20 in those auctions.

Can I set keyword bids with Maximize clicks or Smart Bidding?

No. Google says it isn’t possible to set individual CPC bids with Maximize clicks, though you can set a maximum CPC bid for the whole campaign. Smart Bidding sets a bid for every query at the time of the auction, and Google says there’s no need to update bids for specific ad groups or keywords.

What is the top of page bid (low range) in Keyword Planner?

An approximation of the 20th percentile of what advertisers have historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid, for the location and Search Network settings you chose. The high range is the 80th percentile. Google says the two show bid information from the last 30 days.