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ad with 'av pos' of 15 is displayed...?

         

jxm28788

9:58 am on Aug 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'm new here and have searched through other posts regarding the average position, but couldn't find anything to answer this question - but appologies if there is and I missed it.

I have just started a new ad group and the keyword shows as follows -

status : strong
clicks : 1
Impr : 5
CTR : 20%
Avg. Pos : 15.0

obviously not enough data to be meaningful at this early stage, but what's with the average position?

I know from the other posts that this isn't entirely accurate, but this does seem a long way off - As there are only 8 ads per page if mine is around the 15 mark then how is my ad displayed at all?

Does google do a round robin of the ads with a low max CPC in order to see if they get a decent CTR? or is the avg pos just so unreliable?

Also, does the low number of impressions and the high avg pos imply that it's just not a very popular keyword, or that it is popular but i'm not getting the impressions because my ad is not being shown due to low max CPC?

PCInk

10:05 am on Aug 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



If there are 8 adverts on page one, position 'nine' is the top position on page two. When all the adverts are used, they start again, so page 3 may have the same adverts as page one.

jxm28788

10:17 am on Aug 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



ok, cool. that would explain it. Thanks.

AdWordsAdvisor

9:13 pm on Aug 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Welcome to WebmasterWorld, jxm28788!

...obviously not enough data to be meaningful at this early stage, but what's with the average position?

I know from the other posts that this isn't entirely accurate, but this does seem a long way off - As there are only 8 ads per page if mine is around the 15 mark then how is my ad displayed at all?

One small but really important point of clarification:

The Average Position is absolutely accurate, because it is (literally) an actual accounting of the average position of your ad, for a given keyword, for all it's appearances, in what ever date range you're currently looking at.

An oversimplified example to make the point:

If your ad showed up four times yesterday, and its actual positions were '3', '4', '6' and '3', then your Avg. Pos. for the day will be 4.0.

This is because 3 + 4 + 6 + 3 = 16, and 16/4 = 4.0

Hope that makes sense.

Most likely, you're thinking of the Traffic Estimator, which simply gives you an estimate of postition. On the other hand, your Average Position is a real statistic, and as such is completely accurate.

Math can't lie, after all. ;)

AWA