Is the Position I see the Position You See ?

[max99]

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If i type

"my keyword" into google which i know from adwords says my position is say 5th , I look and i'm not until the bottom of the 2nd page, no where near 5th, is this as im searching and my IP is same as the IP associated with my adwords account
Or is all of the above just crap ?

As well it keeps happening to me, my adds say they are high up, others say they are quite high too, but i see them low



Anyone could shed any light i would appreciate it

[tbp]

The stats in adwords aren't up to the minute, so they can show varying results. 5 could be the average position, occasionally if your ad's shown in position 1 or 2, it will bring the average position up.

The stats aren't great though, and refreshing the page a couple of times gives you a better indication of where your ad's appearing.

[Shane]

noticed this happening this morning, since 9am a main keyword had been showing in 5th place regardless of bid price, I even upped it by about 50% in the end just to get a reaction, normally it's an $800+ dollar a day spend on that one keyword alone and it's in the top 3 all day every day pretty much.

I did 20 searches on my home pc then I logged onto my office pc via VPN and did 20 searches

home pc showed 5th position 20 times in a row, the ad never moved once
office pc showed 1st position 20 times in a row, the ad never moved once

so it's DNS/ISP based methinks.. IMO it's either an anomaly (fingers crossed) or it could be an adwords algo tweak (grrrrr)

if it's a tweak it would have at least two effects and both will have the same ultimate detrimental effect of increased click cost if you want a high position

1) you could see yourself in a very low (compared to normal) position
2) it will let other ads have time in the skyline that technically have no right to be there based on bid price and click through rate combination

end result... you have to bid higher to get "back up" to where you want to be as you'll be playing against an aggregated top 10 of more than one instance of google results..

it's averaging out the CTR and positioning from disparate positions, ie first and fifth.. giving a position of 2.5 and a CTR of say 10% which is nowhere to where it would have been at say 15% in second, or 20% in first, in effect we are paying more to keep the CTR up to a reasonable level and yet are getting a lower CTR than we should be for the cost per click we have in play.. grrr

am hoping it's an anomaly but knowing google it could be a case of multi ad testing at the same time .. am sure they'll have some blurb on how it would benefit us all but really I can't see how it wouldn't mean higher bids all round,

traffic volume would slow for the main merchants on the main terms so they'd bid higher to mop up what was out there only to get dumped down the page again and other users get a look in via a different ISP

[Aspirin]

I have noticed this the last few days also, I am not on page one either when I should be in the top 4, but if you click on "More Sponsored links" that should show the correct ordered list. (I hope).

[10k]

I see what Aspirin sees in some markets, very random results coming through, anyone else see anything odd?

[max99]

glad its not just me , is bit odd

and Aspirin i hope your right to, if i click more sponsered results then my position there is what it normally is.

[max99]

so does anyone know if the position that you search for own adds is same as what others see?

[Shane]

had a response off adwords advisor.. waste of time.. he actually pulls me for doing 20 searches as it'll affect my CTR.. .. won't affect it as badly as the hundreds of searches now zinging past as we are showing in position 5 for half the time !.. tsk .. says we should all be using the preview tool too http://www.google.com/search?adtest=...rm&btnG=Search

I rang google ireland this morning to ask wtf is going on and it turns out it's the result of recent changes in an effort to "increase customer ad quality" oh thank god I thought it was something serious ! ... it seems that by dumping you down the page half the time they think you are suddenly going to write better ads than the ones that were running just fine with an excellent CTR

funny how the ads that replaced our ads were from the bottom of the page and thus technically the poorest ads on the page CTR and bid wise or they wouldn't have been down there would they ? .. again it's a the hand twisted up the back approach ..it sucks !

seems to me it's a simple bid hike strategy...

you see yourself lower so increase your bid.. or you see that you are still in position 3 but traffic has fallen and so has CTR.. result.. you change your ad copy, then lose position due to a new ad establishing itself so have to bid more to get it establised

end result ...kerching at the google till

[10k]

interestingly... I cleared my cookies and browsing history, opened a new window and voila - results were back to where they should be - try it and see what you see. Very odd!

[Shane]

Agency account rep has rung back and basically she's been told that the position fluctuation is a new tweak in the algo to try and show repeat searchers new ads

the theory is that if you didn't see anything worth clicking on search 1 then show you different results on searches 2,3,4 + etc.

valld logic but not working in principle at the moment, I was on fresh browsers on both PC's and the ad that was top previously was welded into position, it didn't move around when searches were being made.. and the replacing urls didn't move around that much either.. just seemed to be a bottom to top swticheroo from the first search to the 20th ..

I love PPC

[cat]

I was logged into a google account and noticed the change this morning.
IMHO This is an excellent idea.

[Shane]

yup tis a good idea i guess.. gives lower ads a chance but by product is higher bids methinks

although the standard google "for the benefit of the user" mantra is valid even though it I guess.. funny how every new change for the benefit of the customer squeezes yet more cash out of already strained wallets

grrrrr