What’s Better, Top or Side?
Top v Side
Last month Google added a new reporting segment to Adwords with the introduction of ‘Top vs. Side’. This feature allows advertisers to see how ads have performed above and to the side of search results.
To view this segment choose the either the ‘campaigns’, ‘ad groups’, ‘ads’ or ‘keywords’ tab and choose ‘Top v Side’ in the segment drop down as shown in the image below.
Google claims that advertisers ‘can better optimize search campaigns by more deeply examining the relationship between your ads’ locations and their clicks and conversions’. It’s true, there is some interesting research to be done on the type of ad messaging and how its performance is affected in the top positions and the side positions.
The performance of top v side is down to a number of variables. Obviously top results are more likely to get the first hits so we expect to see a higher CTR here but format of the ad will also play a role here. We wrote earlier this year about the change to the ad formats where the first description line is used as part of the headline. Advertisers (I Spy included) have begun writing ads to take advantage of the extended headline feature which will only add to the appeal of the top ad listings.
Whilst this segmentation is a very useful piece of insight, it hasn’t yet showed us anything we didn’t already expect – that being in top positions will get you the best CTR. Where this is more useful is when you are the only or one of very few advertisers. If your bid/quality score is low that causes your ad to be on the side even when you are the only advertiser, it shows how your volume of clicks has changed when moved from the top.
This is a promising step as Google is allowing more and more insight into the performance within the search page itself. However, ultimately all the report segments, new features and innovations point to one goal…position 1 is best to get the most traffic to your website.
Experienced users of AdWords will know that when budget constraints play a part, the strategy you deploy wont necessarily be to aim for position 1. New or less experienced advertisers however are shown notifications on minimum first page bids, how much more they can be spending, the bid simulator (showing increased impressions with increased bids) and now this feature – it does mean that the influx of users who act on these notifications could potentially be causing price increases on keywords for other advertisers.
Improving the quality score will obviously help lower your cost but there are more features available in AdWords for aiming to position 1 than for improving quality score, that’s why experienced agencies and advertisers who build campaigns around effective quality score improvements will always stay a step ahead.
