What is the Average Position metric?
The Average Position metric is used to determine the average placement of a Google Ad on Google Search results. For example, an average position of 1.5 meant that your ad appeared in the first or second position, at the top of search results.
Average Position is based on your Ad rank (determined by your bid) and your Quality Score. We all liked this metric because it gave our customers authentic insight into what was actually going on with their ads in search results. Now it’s time to move on.
What is happening now?
Google’s made the announcement that they will remove the Average Position metric from Google Ads. The sunsetting of this Search metric will take effect at the end of September and builds on an earlier announcement where Google pushed their newly introduced “Impression (Absolute Top) %” and “Impression (Top) %” metrics.
Sunsetting the Average Position metric will also affect the following:
- Any rules where average position is used
- Filters where average position had been used
- Any Google Ads scripts that use average position
- Ad reports that use average position
What comes next?
SEM experts will need to rethink how they will run and evaluate Google Ads campaigns without relying on average position. There is some time left to start following Google’s advice and transitioning to the alternative position metrics.
Top Impression Rate and Absolute Top Impression allow us to understand the percentage of absolute top and top of page ad positions you have held. We can use these alternative metrics to tell our customers about the location of their ads and use them to improve the ad position in similar ways to the soon-to-be obsolete average position metric.
What we think
We believe that this may be another step toward automated bidding, where ads are moved automatically to the positions where they stand the best chance of converting.
We also welcome the opportunity to develop novel strategies for optimising our customers’ Ad accounts and demonstrating campaigns’ success.
