But in your experience, does maximizing clicks only drive junk traffic, or is it just my impression? Is it better to use manual CPC to collect data?

[Euphoric-Priority755]

It’s not exactly junk, however, your bidding is not ‘optimal’. It doesn’t take signals into account. Your competitor might be bidding higher for better signals while you are bidding for clicks.

[QuantumWolf99]

Hmm max. Clicks gets a bad reputation but it’s mostly misused… it does what it says, gets you clicks, so if your targeting and negatives are tight the traffic quality is fine. Manual CPC gives you more control during data collection which I personally prefer for new campaigns… you can see exactly what you’re paying per click and adjust without the algorithm making decisions on limited data.

Either way the bidding strategy is never the traffic quality problem… your match types, negative keyword list and search terms are.

[TTFV]

By definition Max Clicks bidding will buy the lowest cost clicks possible. This effectively means bottom feeding for search queries that others (using smart bidding) don’t bid or bid very low on. Importantly two different users searching for exactly the same query are not equal… Google understands the difference in intent based on various user characteristics and recent search history.

And of course those “max clicks” queries are far less likely to convert or generate a high quality/value lead/sale if they do.

So while it’s not necessarily “junk” it’s lower relevance search clicks.

Yes, you’re usually better off using manual CPC so you can at least adjust the bids on a per keyword basis noting you are generally using one “max” bid for all matching queries so this really only makes sense with exact match keywords these days.

Even with low projected conversions, like a half dozen a month, automated bidding will usually perform best.

[No_Stranger91]

I like manual cpc more for data collection, like the first few days/weeks of starting a new campaign/account. Mostly used with phrase or exact match. Personally I have seen disaster happen when you combine maximise clicks with broad match. Wildly irrelevant queries and wasted spend, sometimes with extreme cpc’s. With manual cpc at least you have some control, before you can switch to smart bidding when utilising conversion data.