In June Google made a minor tweak to their Adords algorithm which affected the display position of ads when multiple searches were carried out.

Normally I’m no fan of Adwords changes as most seem to be thinly veiled excuses for jacking up the bids and I was initially sat there thinking what new Adwords joy is this, but upon reflection it does make sense for a change from a user point of view and as result the lower bidders may now get more of a look in.

Basically the tweak was to which results are displayed if a user does repeated searches on the same keyword and then DOESN’T click any results, after a few searches and no clicks happening Adwords starts to move around the Paid listings and brings some of the lower listings up towards the top positions and keeps rotating them.

So when managing your Adwords listings it’s best to go on the information in your account and use the Google Ad Preview Tool so that you’ll see your listings as a new user would see them, the difference can be quite dramatic and often panics some advertisers who see their Adwords account saying average position 2.2 or something yet their ad is usually down in 6th place when they look at it for the 200th time that month without clicking it.

This tweak probably annoys deep pocketed “number 1 at all costs” big brand advertisers as they aren’t always welded to the high positions they usually dominate and it now gives others who are usually well down the page a good chance of being clicked,  so from a user experience does make sense as the searcher has more chance of finding something worth clicking in the higher listings if they revolve as they search.

It’s like being sat at a suishi bar with only 3 main dishes on offer, if you’ve seen them 4 times already and not chosen one is there much sense in carrying on showing you them again  and again in exactly the same order or is there more chance of you trying some suishi if something new is offered which may have been there but not quite in your line of sight ?

The two main benefits of using the Ad Preview tool are that you don’t incurr an ad impression and thus lower your Click Through Ratio and you get the listings how a new searcher will get them and it repeated searching doesn’t affect your adwords CTR negatively.