Goodbye, Average Position, Goodbye

Goodbye, Average Position, Goodbye

Nineteen years have passed until Google has decided to eliminate one of the metrics that has generated more discussions: the Average Position. A decision that has given to speak, both for good and for evil equally. From August of this year, the Average Position disappeared from the tool, a metric that had made no sense for several years. Since Google decided to eliminate the lateral positions and keep only four positions above and another 3 below, the average position lacked credibility. Especially since it is a metric that often generated more confusion than solution. In addition, the change in navigation from desktop to mobile users has not helped to maintain the average position.  

What was the problem? 

For the agencies, it was usual to hear their customers complain, when they saw that their most important keywords (that 20% of the keywords that bring 80% of the conversions) had a lower position than expected, thus creating an advantage for their competitors. This criticism in most cases was only based on the Average Position, while the share of impressions, conversions, profitability, etc. was not taken into account.  The impression share (IS) is one of the most important metrics that exist in Google Ads and that in many occasions is not taken into account. A simple explanation of this metric is how much of the impressions we get for each search a user launches.  

What solution has Google launched so that we are all happy? 

Google decided to launch two new metrics: Absolute Top and Top, and eliminate the Average Position that so many headaches have given customers and consultants. In addition, the impression share metrics have been taken depending on whether it is Absolute Top or Top, so that we are all happy. I explain a little more carefully: the metric called Top includes Absolute Top Position. Top would be what we used to consider as the top 4 positions. Absolute Top (which is not for nothing, but it sounds like cocktail) would be the 1.0 position. And you will surely ask yourself, what about the rest of the positions? Google decided that the rest of the positions are counted as Anywhere on page. So everything would be summarized in this table.

And what about position based bid strategies?

For a long time there is the possibility of adding a bid strategy to campaigns and keywords to achieve a specific Average Position. Well, this strategy will be automatically changed to the bid strategy based on the impression share . It seems that Google decided to simplify this metric to make it easier for managers, customers and agencies to explain where we appear on the search engine page.  For more information, you can visit Google support .