On August 12, Google announced that it will bid adieu to the average position metric, starting the week of September 30.
Back in February, Google said that the average position would be phasing out earlier this year. They took nearly 6 weeks to think about the repercussions of the change and implement updates to any reporting, rules or scripts that use average position.
“Moving forward, we recommend using Search top impression rate and Search absolute top impression rate. These metrics reflect the actual placement of your ad on the page, rather than the position of your ad compared to others. ” Google added.
What Will Change?
Change is constant in search advertising, but average position has one of the few constants for more than 15 years. As a result of the decision to retire those constants, the following functions will be disabled beginning the week of September 30:
- Rules using average position
- Custom columns using average position
- Saved reports that filter on average position
- Saved filters with average position
The average position metric will also be removed from the following:
- Saved column sets
- Saved reports that use the average position column, but don’t filter on it
- Scorecards that use average position in dashboards
So, if you have Google Ads scripts that use average position, Google recommended that you review them to ensure they will continue working as intended.
