Factors Affecting Ad Rank

The following six factors have an influence on Ad Rank: 

1. Maximum CPC: 

(maximum cost-per-click): When you set your bid, you're telling Google Ads the maximum amount you're willing to pay for a click on your ad. The amount you set is the maximum amount that Google can legally charge you for that click.
Be sure that you are willing to pay that price for a single click and do not set it blindly. Your maximum CPC plays a huge influence on your Ad Rank. But it is not the only factor! 

 

2. Quality of your ads and landing page:

Google Ads also looks at how relevant and useful your ad and the website it links to are to the person who'll see it. Google will assess the quality of your ad and it will be summarised in your Quality Score, which you can monitor—and work to improve—in your Google Ads account. 

 

 

3. Ad Rank Threshold:

To help ensure high quality ads, Google sets minimum thresholds that an ad must achieve to show up above the organic listings. 

 

 

4. Ad Auction Competitiveness:

If two ads competing for the same position have similar Ad Ranks, each will have a similar opportunity to win that position. As the gap in Ad Rank between two advertisers’ ads grows, the higher-ranking ad will be more likely to win but also may pay a higher cost per click for the benefit of the increased certainty of winning.

In other words, with everything else being the same, Google will likely end up charging the higher-ranking advertiser a higher cost-per-click. 

 

 

5. Search Context:

When calculating Ad Rank, Google looks at the search terms the person has entered, location, device type (mobile or desktop), other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes. 

 

 

6. Ad Extensions:

Google Ads estimates how extensions and other ad formats you use will impact your ad's performance.

 

 

There are a whole host of factors influencing Ad Rank. The idea is you want to have all these factors in your mind but not necessarily memorising them and understand that each one of them can influence your Ad Rank. 

Out of these six factors, one of them has a primary influence – your willingness to pay the price for a click and the higher your maximum CPC, the higher your Ad Rank. However, it is also important to know that max CPC is not the only influence. Very often, the rest of the influence can weigh in balance with a strong max CPC. 

For example, if your competitor bids a maximum CPC of $2, and you bid $1. Does it mean that he will have a higher ad position than you? Not necessarily! Because there are five other factors that contribute to the computation of Ad Rank. It is quite possible for you to have a higher Quality Score, better quality of ads and landing page, better Search Context despite you having a lower max CPC. And when your Ad Rank is higher, it translates to a higher ad position. 

With regards to whether an ad in position one will show up above or below the organic search results, this is determined by the Ad Rank threshold. They do have other factors including minimum bid price. What they are trying to tell you is that just because you see no ad for a certain keyword, you cannot bid a max CPC of 1 cent. Because part of the Ad Rank threshold is a minimum cost per click and you cannot go lower than that – very often, it is not 1 cent! 

So if you see no ads, and you set your maximum CPC below that minimum threshold, your ad can show up. But it will show up below the organic search results.