Knocked out of the blue

Does not make sense

[vphoner]

When someone has a new ad that is bidding a lot, it can knock out all 2 or three people that were in the blue area, and EVERYONE is back on the right side, which produces less clicks. This does not make sense, since this new ad may bomb, but it knocks everyone out that was producing well in the blue area (above the Search results). Anyone else noticed this?

Its a flaw that should have some sort of solution.

[whoisgregg]

That situation is only temporary. It's a controlled test to see how the ads really compete against each other in terms of CTR. Once the winner(s) emerge, they float right back to the premium positions.

Although I imagine that Google's ability to compare the performance of ads in the premium slots against ads in the right column is reasonably accurate, I can also see why they would always occasionally bump them all into the right column for the system to confirm it's quality assessment.