Google had previously announced that it was going to be removing the average position metric from Google Ads, but it has now confirmed to be happening the week of September 30th.
Google had previously stated they would be removing this back in February, but until now, there was no indication when it would happen.
Why is Google removing average position from Google Ads?
Google will be removing average position as, essentially, they have introduced impression % by top and absolute top.
This tells you what percentage of your ads appear at the top of the page, and the absolute top of the page (which is the first result).
In Google’s own words:
These new metrics give you a much
clearer view of your prominence on the page than average position does.To complement these metrics, we also rolled out “Search absolute top impression share” and “Search (Top) IS“. If you want to optimize for
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9263492position , these are the best metrics to use. And you can use the Target Impression Share Smart Biddingstrategy, if your goal is to get your ads to a prominent location in the search results.
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.
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9439546?hl=en
Google announced that with this change kicking in on September 30th 2019, we will see the following also disab
- Rules
utilising average position - Custom columns using average position
- Saved reports filtered on average position
- Saved filters with
average position - Scripts may also no longer work if they use average position
Average position will also be removed from:
- Saved column sets
- Saved reports using average position columns but do not filter on it
- Scorecards using average position in dashboards
