ads positions

[nobleone]

Most of our ads on adwords are in no.1 position and I use preview tool to view all the ads. When i search through natural search I noticed that the ad appears in position from 1 - 5. I usually clean up all cookies before viewing the ads.

Does google rotate the ads? Anyone has experience with this?

[netmeg]

They're always testing things, moving things around to get the best mix, so the short answer is - yes. I have ads that have been #1 for their keyword every time I've checked for four years, but when I go look at ad position in Google Analytics, I see metrics for positions down as low as #4, so they must have been moving things around.

Plus in some cases, I suppose it's possible for an ad to be beat out by a geo targeted one - say I'm in Michigan, and someone in Ohio has an ad that beats mine, but he's only targeting Ohio, so I don't see him beat mine.