Today saw the launch of a brand new segment report within the Adwords interface – The Top vs Side
Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, wrote a post about understanding the average position metric. Hal explained, there is a big difference between when your ad appears in position #1 above the search results and when your ad appears in position #1 on the side. Quoting Hal, “This distinction is important, since, on average, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the right-hand side.”
Well, courtesy of this new segment report you can now see for yourself the justification in terms of structuring your Adwords Campaign strategy to deliver results within the Top 3 positions. Prior to this new report the only method to build understanding as to the impact of Ad Position upon site conversions and CPC was through the Analytics Adwords “Keyword Positions” report which delivered conversion and click volume figures.
Reporting is available at Campaign, Ad Group, Ad and Keyword level providing you with a wealth of information to make far better judgement calls in terms of the optimisation of your budget and campaign performance. Not only can you view the difference within your average CPC, retailers can view their true CPA based on “Top Ad” and “Side Ad” segments.
- Select the Campaign, Ad groups, Ads or Keywords tab of your AdWords account.
- Click the Segment button in the toolbar above your data table.
- Select Top vs. side from the drop-down. Results will appear in rows beneath each of your ads.
That’s great to know. I’m fairly new to adwords and trying to learn as much as I can, so thanks for this.
Thanks for this information. I was really interested to analyse my results. I’m pretty much getting no clicks on side adverts despite a 300% increase in their impressions!