Google has Introduced four new search ad position metrics to get the most out of the average position. Let's go over them in this blog and learn how it can benefit you.

Average position is a widely used metric but people have a lot of misconceptions about it. The introduction of new search metrics will be able to give more insights than the average position. Continue reading to know more:

It’s very important to know where an ad appears on the search engine results page. To give an example, if the ad appears more at the top of the results, can majorly have a direct and positive impact on your click-through rate. Now, if you get to know about the percentage of eligible impressions appearing at the top, that you are already getting, you will be able to take decisions about whether to increase bidding or the quality of ads or both.

The new metrics suggest that the ad position of “1” means your ad shows ahead of other advertisers most of the time, but it doesn’t mean that the ad has been placed at the top all the time. It could have been shown at the bottom of the results in some instances.

To clear this misconception, Google has introduced four search ad position metrics. Search absolute top impression rate “Impr. (Abs. Top) %” and Search top impression rate “Impr. (Top) %”. These metrics tell you the location of your ads on the Search engine result pages (SERPs).

These new metrics have been currently rolling out for several weeks. Let’s have a look at this Google Ads update in detail:

• Search Top Impression Share is the ratio of the number of impressions on top divided by the total number of eligible impressions on top.
• Search Absolute Top Impression Share is the ratio of impressions on the absolute top divided by the total number of eligible impressions on top.

There are various factors due to which the campaigns lose impression share. They are termed as follows:

• Search lost absolute top impression share (budget)- This estimates how often, due to low budget, an ad was not the very first ad above organic results.
• Search lost top impression share (budget)- This indicates how often your ad was not shown anywhere above the organic results.
• Search lost absolute top impression share (rank)- This shows how often your ad was not eligible to show as the very first ad above organic results, due to the low ad rank.
• Search lost top impression share (rank)- It estimates how often your ad was not shown anywhere above the organic results due to low ad rank.

Depending on where your ad is placed, you could appear in different kinds of searches. Like what's mentioned in this video, for example. 

Watch the entire webinar here.

What changes after this:
To begin with, remove the column for average position and from the columns list add Impr. (Absolute Top) % and “Impr. (Top) %.

If you use the automatic bidding strategy to get your ads to prominent locations, check out the new bidding strategy named ‘Target Impression Share Bid Strategy’. This recently introduced bidding strategy will have an option to target the ‘Top’ or ‘Absolute Top’ of the search page.

On the contrary, if you want to keep the existing automated rules, scripts, APIs etc, you should switch to ‘Search (Abs. Top) Impression Share’ or ‘Search (Top) Impression Share’ in your rules.

The typical bidding strategies like ‘Target CPA’ & ‘Target ROAS’ will remain the same.

Conclusion:
From the early stages of Google Ads, the average position has been a bit of misguiding metric until now. But not anymore, with the release of the 4 new metrics mentioned above, advertisers would be able to accurately measure the location of their ads on the search result page, and meaningfully evaluate the performance in a better way.