Average position was one of the original metrics in AdWords. For many advertisers, the metric was helpful. An average position of 1.5 meant that an ad appeared at or near the top, in the first or second position of the page. Google added those in November to “describe what percent of your ads appear at the top of the page and absolute top of the page.” The metrics are how Google will inform advertisers about the prominence of their ads. So what are these new metrics? “Impression (Absolute Top) %” is the percentage of time your ads are in the very first position, above the organic search results. “Impression (Top) %” is the percentage of the time your ads are anywhere above the organic search results. My client’s ad in position two would have had no Top and Absolute Top impressions since the ad was not in the number one spot and not above the organic results. The second reason is that Google wants advertisers to move away from manual bidding. Learn what Top and Absolute Top impression-share metrics mean to your account.
Last year Google Ads finally transitioned all advertisers to its new interface. There were many changes. One was that “Average Position” no longer appeared in a column by default.
It was an annoyance, but I diligently added it back in the various views and accounts. Then, in November, Google Ads moved the column in the “Add Columns” interface from “Performance” to “Competitive Metrics.”
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The move added a little more friction to the process of adding the column. But more importantly, Google was implicitly demoting the metric. When it buries something that deep — below many metrics, even in the Competitive Metrics section — something is up.
And now Google has made it official.
Goodbye Average Position
The announcement in Google Ads Help is titled “Prepare for average position to sunset.” Google has not publicly addressed it other than in the short announcement — not even a single tweet! Average position was one of the original metrics in AdWords. It’s now going away in September 2019.
For many advertisers, the metric was helpful. It was a connection to the search results page. An average position of 1.5 meant that an ad appeared at or near the top, in the first or second position of the page. It was more tangible than most pay-per-click metrics.
However, with Google’s ever-changing search engine result pages, the metric wasn’t as clear as it may have seemed. For example, just the other day I encountered an SERP with one ad above the organic results and three beneath (on a desktop). My client was in position two. But seeing that in a report would have been misleading since position two was below the organic…
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