It seems like it's best to have my ad in the 3-6 position. Do you guys use Google's "position preference" tool for this, or do you just bid lower for keywords in the 1-2 position and more for keywords at 7+?
davewray
8:20 pm on Jun 24, 2007 (gmt 0)
Position preference is useful if you have determined that you get far better conversions at placement #3 as opposed to #1. However, if you use position preference and put in a range of #3 to #6, you may be risking not showing at all if you haven't bid high enough to make it to position #6. You could, however, have made it to position #7, but because that is not in your range of "preferred" positions you'll never show....I've only heard of advertiser's losing volume using this method (unless you are just advertising to build a brand and money out isn't as important...then bid high enough)
Tonearm
2:02 pm on Jun 25, 2007 (gmt 0)
Good point. Do you think position preference specifying something like position 3 or less would work well? Would that just reduce my bid and position if I would show up #1 otherwise? What about if I'm the only guy bidding on a particular keyword? Will I not show up at all?
poster_boy
2:57 pm on Jun 25, 2007 (gmt 0)
In my experience, Position Preference (despite the name) will not achieve what you are looking to do. Check out this thread, and AWA2's confirmation that the upper limit is not a "hard limit".
The position preference doesn't always work. For example, if your 'minimum bid' is high enough to put you in the #1 spot and you have set your max position for the #3 spot, the minimum bid will override the max position and your ad will continue to show in the #1 spot.
I don't know if this makes any sense, but this is how an AdWords rep explained things to me when I had a keyword with an average position higher than the max position I had set for the keyword.
Tonearm
3:53 pm on Jun 25, 2007 (gmt 0)
Ok, thanks guys. Sounds like manual bidding to achieve a preferred position is the way to go.
