Average Position Is Going Away

A metric with an end date

Google Ads announced yesterday that average position, the figure many advertisers have watched for years, will be retired in September.

In its place, Google points to impression share and to two newer rates, added last year, describing how often your ad appears at the top of the page.

For an advertiser who glances at a monthly report, the change sounds cosmetic. For anybody with rules, scripts or reports built on average position, it is a job with a deadline.

It is also a good moment to admit the old number never meant what most people thought.

What average position never told you

• Where on the page the ad appeared: above the results or below them.
• How often the ad did not appear at all.
• The spread behind the average, steady or erratic.
• Whether the position paid, in calls, forms or sales.

The first is the one that misled most advertisers. Position one meant first among the ads shown, and when no ads ran above the search results, first place could sit at the bottom of the page.

An average of two could mean second every time, or first half the time and third the rest. The number looked precise and described neither.

The replacements, in plain terms

Search impression share is the proportion of searches your ad was eligible for in which it actually appeared. It counts the auctions you missed, which average position ignored.

Top impression rate is the proportion of your ad's appearances that were anywhere above the unpaid results.

Absolute top impression rate is the proportion that were the very first ad on the page.

Alongside them, the lost impression share columns say why you missed the rest: the budget running out, or ad rank too low.

All of them can be added as columns at campaign level, and most at keyword level too. Save the set, so every report opens with them already in place.

Reading them together

The useful picture comes from combining them, not from any one alone.

A high top impression rate with low impression share means the ad does well when it shows but misses many searches.

If that share is lost to budget, higher bids will not help. They make each click dearer, so the budget runs out sooner.

A low top impression rate with share lost to rank points to bids, ad quality or relevance, which is where the ads themselves come back into it.

And high impression share with a low top rate means the ad nearly always shows, but usually below other ads or below the results. Whether that matters depends on what those placements bring in.

What depends on it

Anything that reads average position will stop working when it goes.

Automated rules that raise bids when position falls. Scripts and custom columns. Dashboards that pull it into Data Studio, and the monthly report from whoever runs your account.

Some of these will simply show blanks in September. Rules are worse, because a rule that no longer acts gives no sign of it until spending drifts.

Ask whoever set up the account for a list of them, since rules and scripts are easy to forget once they are running.

A worked example

A moving company with three trucks ran its own search ads, with a rule that raised bids on any keyword whose average position was worse than two.

The rule fired often, and the cost of each click crept up all last year. Average position barely moved.

Impression share explained why. The ads were missing a large share of the searches they qualified for, and that share was being lost to budget, not to rank.

Each bid increase made clicks dearer, so the daily budget ran out earlier, and the ads vanished from afternoon searches, just when people were planning moves after work.

Average position never showed any of that, because it only measured the auctions the ads took part in. Once the money ran out, the missing afternoons simply did not count.

The fix was to delete the rule, reset bids on the keywords that actually brought jobs, and watch impression share lost to budget instead, so the money could last into the evening.

What to change in bidding

Stop bidding for a position. Position was only ever a means to a phone call or a form, and paying more to be first guarantees neither.

Where top placement genuinely matters, such as searches for your own business name, judge it by top impression rate instead.

For general searches, placement is worth exactly what it brings in enquiries. A lower position at a lower cost can be the better buy, and only your own enquiry figures can say.

Save the history

Comparisons over time will break when the column goes.

Before September, export average position by month for each campaign, and keep it with the rest of your figures.

Put this year's impression share and top rates beside it, month by month, so the record carries on in the new measures.

Note in your records that the measure changed, so nobody compares a top impression rate next year with an average position from this one.

A different average position

Search Console also shows an average position, for your unpaid results. It is a separate measure, and nothing about it has changed.

The two have always been easy to confuse in reports that put them side by side. After September, any average position in a report will be the Search Console one.

The counter-case

For some accounts, very little changes.

An account with a handful of keywords, no rules and no scripts, whose owner never paid attention to average position, loses nothing but a column.

Accounts using automated bidding towards conversions were not bidding on position anyway.

And small accounts on a tight budget usually lose their missing share to budget rather than rank, so the lesson there is about budget, not position.

But reports, rules and the habits of whoever reads them all need switching, and September is closer than it sounds. Move to impression share and the top rates now.

Before September

1. Export average position history by month.
2. Find every rule that uses it.
3. Rebuild those rules on the new metrics.
4. Add impression share columns to your reports.
5. Add top and absolute top impression rates.
6. Ask your provider to switch their reports.
7. Judge placement by the enquiries it brings.

Step two is the one that prevents a quiet failure. A report with a blank column gets noticed; a bid rule that quietly stops working may not be.

Writing ads that earn their place on the page is covered in expanded text ads and the new responsive ones.

Frequently asked questions

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