Has Google raised the bar for going North

Can't get the premium position

[lgn1]

We had some ad's that had the #1 or #2 premium position
for between 10-15 cents. Ever since Google changed
its adwords format, we also seem to have lost our premium position (We are #1 and #2 on right hand side, with no premium spots).

How much do you need to bid to get a premium position,
considering you are #1 or #2 on the right hand bar?

[UpDown]

I have ads that have gone north and nothing changed with the new layout. Maybe somebody below you has increased their bid, with the result that your rank is not far enough ahead of theirs anymore.

I have noticed that for the 'gone north' ads position 1 seems to be getting a much higher CTR at the expense of Position 2. I suspect this is because the two ads have been merged together, no gap between

[atlrus]

Well, Google has aways claimed on its website that in order to get the premium position you had to spend $30,000 or more over 3 month's period, but every now and than, if you bid over $10 and there was no more than 1 more advertiser with bid higher than you - your ad would show on the premium spot.
I guess they fixed this when they changed the GUI.
I have tried since to show on the premium spot by raising my bid to the max $50 - but don't do any good.

[UpDown]

Last year there was a premium advertisers scheme which offered the top spots to high paying advertisers. That scheme has finished and the top spot is there for the taking. There have been several threads about how to get there.

Your ad needs to have been approved, to have a good CTR, to have a rank number (CTR times Bid) much better than the other ads, and possibly some other secret ingredient, maybe related to how long your ad has been showing. A high bid is not the secret, you need the other factors as well. I have a few ads in the top spots, paying no more than 10c, they have been there since last year.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Well, Google has aways claimed on its website that in order to get the premium position you had to spend $30,000 or more over 3 month's period...

Updown is correct. The program described above began to phase out mid 2003, and was ended entirely on December 31, 2003.

Simply stated, the ads in the top two spots are now AdWords ads that have met an additional performance bar.

No recent changes to the algo that I am aware of. However, here are two things that are different than the factors (Max CPC x CTR) that determine placement on the right hand side:

* Actual CPC, rather than Maximum CPC, is more important in terms of going North. So raising your Max CPC has less effect than you might be used to.

* The algo more heavily weights CTR as a factor.

So bottom line, going North has more to do with the relevance of your ads as judged by our users (in other words, CTR), than with what you've bid.

AWA