Hopefully, you can help me in finding this answer - my creative director is convinced that there is logic behind whether your add appears in the middle section or the right. He also wants to know why sometimes you only see ads on the right - none in the middle. Everything I've been able to find has said that it is arbitrary.
Thanks!
[...] He also wants to know why sometimes you only see ads on the right - none in the middle. Everything I've been able to find has said that it is arbitrary.
Hello debbieca - the very short story is that ads must meet a quality/CPC standard to be sent 'up top'. If no ads meet that standard, then no ads are shown above the search results.
More information may be found on this page from the AdWords Help Center:
Can I make my ads appear above search results?
[adwords.google.com...]
(Be sure to note the 'plus boxes' that lead to additional information.)
Excerpting from that page.
[...]
’Ad rank’ refers to how we determine an ad’s position on the page. An ad’s position on the search network is based on the matched keyword's cost-per-click (CPC) bid times its Quality Score. A keyword's Quality Score for ad position is based on its clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the ad and keyword to the search query, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors.
For ad placement in top positions above Google search results, we use the same formula, based on your Quality Score and CPC bid. However, only top-ranked ads --- ads that exceed a certain Quality Score and CPC bid threshold – are eligible to appear in these positions.
The CPC bid threshold is determined by the matched keyword's Quality Score; the higher Quality Score, the lower the CPC threshold. This ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show above search results.
[...]
AWA
Thanks Again!
Thanks - that clarifies things a bit. Now I know he is going to want to know why some ads appear in the middle and some in the right. (Is the middle section higher ranked than the right?)
I think this is maybe a language issue, debbieca: I think that what I am calling 'above the search results' or 'up-top', you are calling 'in the middle'.
But if I am not mistaken, we are talking about the same thing: the sponsored links which are not at the right of the page, but which are, instead, above the unpaid search results that appear on the left.
For clarity's sake, here's some info on what's what on a Google search page:
* What are the different types of results on a Google search page?
[adwords.google.com...]
And here is information on how ads are ranked:
* How are ads ranked?
[adwords.google.com...]
How can that be true when randomly for the same search you will see top slots and sometimes you won't.
Every single time a search is done, in the split second during which the search results are returned, a real-time auction is run, and the advertisers who are eligible to appear are ranked in accordance with the factors in play at that instant. The factors that effect rank, such as Quality Score and CTR are constantly changing. So position is not fixed. Instead, it is always changing and can easily be different from one search to the next.
The same is true for an advertiser's eligibility to show. This can change from one instant to the next in reaction to factors such as daily budget, increases or decreases in Max CPC, ads scheduling, changes to ad copy, etc.
Finally, ads only get sent to the top spots above the search results if they are approved - so if an ad appears in a top spot one moment, but is edited in the next, then it will no longer appear in top spots until it has been reviewed and approved - and only then if it meets the threshold I talked about in my last post.
The AdWords system is far from static. There are a great many factors that can (and do) change from one second the next amongst a pool of advertisers competing the same keyword, with the result that the ads that show - and the order in which they show - can easily change from one moment to the next.
AWA
