Ever wondered if the position of your ad on the Google search results page effects your conversion? Well, logically you would think that the higher your ad is positioned in the SERP’s then the more clicks you are likely to receive, resulting in a higher conversion.

But apparently this isn’t the case…

Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian and his team have studied the AdWords data and have concluded that overall the conversion rate does not vary all that much based on the ad position. Here is Hal’s conclusion:

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.

Hal explains more about their research on the Inside AdWords blog here.

So what does that mean? It highlights the importance of getting your ad copy right. It may be less important to have the highest position in the sponsored listings, but if your copy isn’t great, then people aren’t going to click on your ad. Luckily we can help, Rene wrote an article just recently on the 7 rules to great ad copy, check it out here.

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