In my Adwords account page for the current day my best keywords are given as Avg Pos 3.x or 4.x but when I do a test search they are consistently #1. Anyone know why this is so (maybe it's a Google trick to get me to increase my bid unnecessarily? --
I think the key here is test search. What kind of test search are you doing? It's easy to get tricked into a false ad position assertion if you're not testing against exact matches. For example, if I'm bidding on the broad keyword pet stain remover (not [pet stain remover] or "pet stain remover"), and I go to google and type in pet stain remover then I may see my ad in a different place because what I bid on was the broad match, but what I searched for was the exact match. From my experiences, it's difficult to see how you are coming up for anything but a few broad matches, simply because there's so many different ways people could be typing in those terms and pulling up your ads. However, if you're bidding on the exact match [pet stain remover] and it says your avg. position is 3.x or 4.x and then you go and type in pet stain remover and your ad comes up #1, it may be the case that the competition is doing something else - maybe just put up, took down their ad, maybe their QS just got evaluated or they dropped their bid, etc etc - lots of different things that could happen. It's pretty unlikely it's G just trying to trick you to get more cash (as being in position #1 and bidding more won't change anything anyways). -T
Yeah I understand what you mean -- so many variables. And it's impossible to tell exactly what people are typing in. I have an 'exit' page for online orders where I ask what was their search term, but that doesn't give a broad picture because my conversion rate is low (highly priced product). -- MP