It seems that on pretty much all of my AdWords accounts the AvgPos metric is all but useless. Whenever I run reports, AdWords shows my AvgPos as being in the top 3. When I run an actual search, the ads are usually in the 7th or 8th position in the SERPs. What gives? Explanations that I have seen are geographical differences, (ie. the ad may be ranked 1 consistently for regionX but in regionY it is in 7th or 8th). Other explanations are time of day ranking differences as AvgPos is an average throughout the entire day across all regions. Can someone shed some light on how AvgPos is calculated, and how accurate it is for you?
The average position is correct, it's your search results that are misleading. Whilst the geographical argument and variations through the day are both valid reasons (as is the results from previous searches being interspersed with your new search results), the main cause is a little more complicated. Google basically fiddles with the results if you repeatedly search for the same term. Since you're searching for your keywords, and not clicking on your adverts, Google's decided that it wasn't what you were looking for, and shows you other adverts instead. To see what somebody searching for your keyword for the first time will see, you need to use Google's Adpreview tool: www.google.com/adpreview This shows the typical search results for somebody searching for the first time. You should use this anyway, as it will not increase your impressions (and hence reduce your clickthrough rate, and Quality Score). Google explain the tool in more detail here: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46454 You may also want to read this, as it contains some warnings about the limitations of Adpreview: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2008/06/02/ad-preview-tool/
Hmm thanks, I'll try the Ad Preview tool just to make sure. My rep did not even suggest checking with that tool but he just assured me that the reported AvgPos is correct.