From time to time, team members will share their views stimulated by content from an industry thought leader. Here, our Project Manager, Irina Boudreau, discusses the recent article by Jess Armstrong at WordStream, “Goodbye, Average Position: Everything You Need to Know”.
It’s finally here. On September 30, 2019 Google will officially retire the Average Position metric in Google Ads and replace it with four brand new ones:
- Top impression rate
- Absolute Top impression rate
- Search top impression share
- Search absolute top impression share
Are you ready? Here’s what you need to know.
Why Average Position is going away
In 2016, when Google changed its position on “one SERP fits all” strategy, the Average Position metric lost its usefulness. Since ads started showing up above and below organic search results, the Average Position showed no indication of where exactly on the page your ad showed up.
Consider the following scenario: let’s say the Average Position you see is 3.5. Not bad you think. But what if two ads appeared above the organic search results and two appeared below. This means that your ad, being in the 3rd position, was displayed at the bottom of SERP. And we all know that ads displayed at the top of SERP tend to perform better.
The Average Position does not tell you where on the page your ads appear, which is useless to you in determining your bidding strategy.
How the new metrics will help
Your PPC vocabulary will soon gain two new terms: top and absolute top. These terms refer to ad positions in the SERP.
The four new metrics – top impression rate, absolute impression rate, search top impression rate, and search absolute impression rate – will help you better understand your ads’ positioning at the top of SERP and provide better opportunities to fine-tune your bidding strategy.
All in all, it’s a good change.
For more details on Average Position and the new metrics head over to WordStream.
