What is Google doing now? Position all over the place

[avalon37]

I've been the #2 position on a very highly searched keyword for the last year; the keyword has a 9.02% CTR in that time. I paused the entire ad group 2 days before Christmas and unpaused yesterday. I CANNOT get back to #2 or #3. I am either #1 or when I drop my CPC max bid #5 or #6. This is crazy; I am going penny by penny increase and decrease and nothing is working. Even when I use [adwords.google.com...] at the same CPC max bid my position is either #1 or #5/6. This is not happening on any other ad groups. This is not happening due to advertiser competition either - it some weird new Google bug.

[avalon37]

I also should mention it seems the last 2 days that bid changes are taking much longer than usual to process/take effect which is not helping me figure out the correct big price for the ranking I want to attain.

[cyberandroid]

do you use conversion optimizer?
if not why?

most likely some of your competitors do

try turning on position preferance with an upper limit of 2 and no lower limit

keep adjusting your bid until your average posision is lower then 2 but higher then 3