Adwords Preview Tool

Accurancy of the Ad Preview

[marthinuss]

Hello all

When checking on the Ad Preview to see if my Ad is running my position for example will be #1. Then when I use my Firefox browser and search Google my ad is position #7. When I use Chrome it's position #2 and when I search with IE, my ad is not there at all.

This changes randomly and I never get a consistent result from anywhere. This adgroup has an average position of 2.2 according to the reports.

I still don't understand what their "average of 2.2" means.

So, to recap:

1. Why the discrepancy between Ad Preview and browsers. I understand the browsers are live searches and the Ad Preview is not live, but why the big difference? Could it be time-zone related? I am in South Africa.

2. What does average position actually mean and is there any relationship between average position and the position that Ad Preview shows?

Sorry if this ground has been covered before.

Many thanks
Marthinus

[instand1]

Google serves different positions to different persons. If a person never clicks on a specific ad, then this ad is shown less frequently. It depends on the profile that google has of the person. If you are logged in any google account, you get different results. (in SERPS and in the positions of the ads.)
Whether the Ad Preview shows the average position, if you use it often enough? Maybe.