Hi Guys,

 

Does anyone know how to make your sponsored link appear on the top of the search results rather than down the right hand side? Seems like a simple question but all of our ads seem to appear on the right and we wanted them to appear above the search results.

 

Many thanks

 

Tel

pay more.

 

Google sticks the most loved/most clicked and highest bid ads at the top so they can make the most money.

Ok cool - just thought i'd double check that one

 

So if we payed more than a certain competitor who is currently at the top whilst we are at the side... we'd overtake him?

 

 

yes but im not sure how much more. if you start paying top dollar and decrease as you get clicks until your in 2nd top spot then try and maintain that. I have read something saying that #2 adword gets most clicks

If you look in the more advanced settings in adwords then you can tell it to only target certain positions, can be handy for comparing click through ratios if you set it to only target one range one week and another the next.

Click Through Rate (CTR) does also play a part in the ad placement. Google say that this is about showing the best ads to people, but it's a lot easier to understand like this :

 

- ad 1 is bidding £1.00 a click, gets shown 10 times and clicked once. Google makes £1

- ad 2 is bidding £0.25 a click, gets shown 10 times and clicked five times. Google makes £1.25

 

Ad 2 is obviously what the searchers want, but it's what Google wants too. The example is a pretty extreme one but just to demonstrate the principle.

 

Try different ad texts - Google will rotate them and choose the most popular ones automatically. Also make sure that you are targeting focused keywords rather than bidding on broad match terms. Bids for targeted keywords are sometimes less.

 

If you're sure your ads are as targeted and clickable as they can be then your only option after that is upping the bid.

Great post.

 

We are about to launch an adwords campaign and this makes lots of sense.

 

cheers