A few months ago, our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, wrote a post about understanding the average position metric. As Hal explained, there is a big difference between when your ad appears in position #1 above the search results and when your ad appears in position #1 on the side. Quoting Hal, “This distinction is important, since, on average, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the right-hand side.”

Given this “important distinction,” we are excited to announce the new “Top vs. side” AdWords report segment.

Starting this week, you can use the “Top vs. side” report segment to see how your ads perform above and to the side of Google search results. Armed with this new information, you can better optimize your search campaigns by more deeply examining the relationship between your ads’ locations and their clicks and conversions. And brand advertisers can now get better visibility into when and where their critical brand terms are triggering ads above search results.

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How to view your “Top vs. side” data

To segment your performance data by where your ads appeared on Google and Search Partner search results pages, you simply need to add the “Top vs. Side” segment to your data table. Here’s how:

1. Select the Campaign, Ad groups, Ads or Keywords tab of your AdWords account.
2. Click the Segment button in the toolbar above your data table.
3. Select Top vs. side from the drop-down. Results will appear in rows beneath each of your ads.

Visit the AdWords Help Center to learn more about top ad position reporting and increasing your top ad impressions.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords crew