Home > News Update: Google to Retire Position Preference Feature

News Update: Google to Retire Position Preference Feature

Google announced yesterday afternoon that they will be retiring their position preference bidding feature in AdWords early next month.

While this seems like a reasonable timeframe to phase out a key component, you should be aware that as of today you can no longer enable position preference for your campaigns in AdWords, and if you turn off position preference in any of your campaigns you can’t turn it back on.

What does this mean for your AdWords bidding strategy? While using the position preference feature in AdWords was often a timesaver, in the end I don’t really seeing its removal having a profound or negative effect on your AdWords campaigns. As I’m sure you were already aware, using position preference was kind of a double-edged sword. If your ad rank suddenly dropped or your bids were too high/low, your ads would cease to be shown.

As Google suggests, an alternative tool in AdWords is the automatic rules feature. This gives you the ability to trigger changes to a bid, budget or status, but unlike position preference, this won’t create a situation that could potentially disqualify your ad from showing in search queries. You could, for example, set a rule to increase your budget for keywords below a certain position, or conversely to decrease your bid for keywords after they’ve spent a specific amount of money.

As always, if you’re concerned about overspending in your campaigns, then you’ll need to be diligent about monitoring your account’s performance. But the removal of the position preference feature doesn’t limit your ability to create some automated activity to make your job a little easier.

What do you think? Do you see Google’s decision to eliminate this feature as an inconvenience to you in managing your PPC accounts? Was this a feature you were using heavily, and, if so, have you come up with a good work-around? Leave us a comment below and let us know what you think!

April 6, 2011

About the Author

Sarah

Sarah is a former Account Manger at Hanapin Marketing, a search engine marketing firm focused on generating results through pay-per-click advertising.

  • Pingback: News Update: Google to Retire Position Preference Feature | Iuvo

  • Randy

    What about when bidding on Trademarked terms, when the Brand has requested that you don’t feature above position 3 for example? Inconvenience for sure!

    • Sarah

      Hi Randy – you can actually set up an automatic rule that will allow you to pause your keywords when your average position is above or below a specified value. If you’re on the Keywords tab in AdWords, you’ll find the option to create this rule in the Automate drop down menu. Hope that helps!

    • http://www.hanapinmarketing.com Bethany Bey

      Hi Randy,

      Here’s a link to a great post on Straight Up Search that walks through the keyword position automated rule Sarah mentioned: http://goo.gl/po64p

  • http://www.robburns.net Rob Burns

    I was never totally convinced that the position preference feature did the job really well anyway. Especially in low demand and long tail searches where there are fewer advertisers and it was acceptable to have a lower position to make saving. Despite expressing a preference it seemed not to make a substantial amount of difference, so I tended to manage the bids more actively rather than rely on position preference. In that sense, it’s no great loss, but it does mean slightly more intensive management. For me that’s okay, I prefer being hands on to leaving it to automated – and I think that’s what my clients appreciate too. So it’s all good.

    • Sarah

      Thanks for the comment, Rob! I agree that it’s beneficial to be as hands on as possible with your accounts. In the end the removal of this feature probably won’t create a giant ripple in terms of account management, especially with the ability to create automated rules for those who relied more heavily on position preference.

  • Pingback: News Update: Google to Retire Position Preference Feature « « Big Engine Media Big Engine Media

  • Pingback: Newport Beach Houses Real Estate Search » Blog Archive » Live, Work and Retire in Mexico

  • http://twitter.com/marcosinsitus Marcos Ametller

    I don’t feel comfortable using automated rules to control agv position. Is like paying less to a bus driver for driving too fast, I prefer to give a limitation to the engine. On the other hand all those impressions wasted when not controlled by position preference… what do I need my ads to appear below the 6th or 7th position?

  • http://www.payperclickhouston.com Phokhong

    The data is coming in.  I get an email from a client asking why conversions went down in May vs. April.  Nothing has changed except the average position of the keywords.  I realized the position bidding was disabled early May.  Our CR was cut in half.  I don’t know about you, but to say, conversion doesn’t get affected by position is absolutely false and Google knows this, but; they have the right to do what they want.  It’s apparent that the keywords are just going to get more expensive from now on.