Archive for August, 2009

The Google AdWords blog shared some research on conversion rates by ad position:

We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that, on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad. For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position, would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average. Ads above the search results have a conversion rate within ±2% of right-hand side positions.

The bottom line: conversion rates don’t vary much by position.

I suspect in some instances the ad position may have a larger influence than others (areas with news spikes, lots of curiosity clicks, and broad matching that goes to broad). But its nice to get confirmation that in general the conversion rates are fairly flat by position in most cases.