Ad Rank in Google Ads: How Does It Work and What are the Ranking Factors?


We see Google ads appearing on search results almost every day. You may also be familiar with Google Ads and may have used the platform to run paid ad campaigns to boost your e-commerce reach and conversions. However, if you want to learn more about the factors affecting your ad rankings and the tips to do it correctly, you are in the right place!

AdRank is an intricate formula that Google advertisers use to rank or order their ads and campaigns on the search engine results pages. Ads with the hugest AdRank show up higher on the search results and hence, would receive more visibility, reach, and clicks.

A Brief About Google Ads

Google Ads (former Google AdWords) is an online paid advertising platform that enables marketers to create digital ads to boost reach and conversions by promoting their brand and its products and services. You can create relevant ad campaigns to reach your target audience exactly when they are interested in your products and services.

To ensure your ads are highly targeted and relevant, you need to perform thorough keyword and market research to identify where your customers are in the sales funnel. Google Ads enables eCommerce marketers to increase brand awareness, promote unique products and solutions, boost website traffic, and increase online sales. Advertisers can change and later their ad campaigns at any time by making budget adjustments, modifying their ad texts, and changing other settings to maximize results.

What is Ad Ranking?

AdRank in Google Ads (or Google AdWords) is an online auction that monitors your cost-per-click (CPC) and determines how precisely your ad campaigns are displayed on Google search results. It is a value used to determine where competing ads will be shown on the SERPs (search engine results pages) in relation to other competing ads.

AdRank works on a formula that determines whether your ad will be shown at all. The rank is calculated every time your ad becomes eligible to appear on Google’s result pages. Ad positions can fluctuate every time, depending on factors like auction-time competition, ad quality, the searcher’s search context, the nature of search terms, and others.

How Does Google’s Ad Ranking Formula Work?

AdRank is calculated based on your bid amount, your ad relevance, the quality of your ads during the auction period, and the landing page experience. The position and order of your ad also depend on the audition’s competitiveness, the AdRank thresholds, and the searcher’s context (including the person’s device, location, time of the search, etc.). Although Google does not publish the AdRank formula, according to expert assumptions, it is roughly calculated using the following formula −

AdRank = CPC Bid X Quality Score

The formula determines the order in which different ads in a particular niche are ranked on the SERPs. AdRank algorithms have a great impact on your ads’ visibility to your prospective buyers. Google will estimate your ad formats, their quality, relevance, the prominence of the assets on the search results, and click-through rates to calculate the ideal rank.

Therefore, even if a competing ad has higher builds than yours, you can still manage to win a favorable position on the SERPs at a lower rate, provided you use quality ads and highly relevant target keywords. This means that if a search query is not identical to the search keyword (provided the ad is eligible), that ad campaign won’t show up, and the one with the highest ad rank gets selected.

Google Ads is not like a simple auction - it works on a more complicated formula that keeps changing from time to time. If it were a simple auction, the campaign with the highest bids would have been ranked higher. But that is not the case. Many other factors (as discussed above) determine the ranking of a particular ad or campaign.

To summarize, the factors of AdRank include the following −

  • Max Bid − It is the maximum payment the advertiser is willing to make per click for a given keyword.

  • Quality Score − It is a score given on a scale of 1 to 10. Google assigns this quality score to different ads, and it determines the experience a user would have with a specific ad campaign or a landing page. Multiple factors affect the ad’s quality score, such as landing page experience, ad relevance, and the expected click-through rate.

  • Ad format − It refers to additional format features, including ad extensions, which may affect the click-through rate.

Top Tips to Improve Your Ad Rank

Every advertiser aims to enhance their ad rank without increasing their bids too much. Here are some of the best methods to enhance your ad rank.

  • Monitor relevant search terms for your keywords and incorporate them in your campaigns.

  • Focus on maintaining your ad quality and recall the ad rank formula.

  • Create relevant ads, as it acts as a determining factor for your ad’s quality score.

  • Improve your website’s user experience and make it mobile-friendly to improve your quality score.

  • Use Google Keyword Planner to find different keyword variations for better targeting.

  • Improve your landing page design and experience to improve your quality score.

  • Include your primary keywords in your website’s meta title and meta description.

To position your ads better, you can implement the following practices −

  • Bid more as it is the quickest way to increase your ad rankings and drive more traffic. It may not be a convenient option for small-scale businesses or those who are on a tight budget. But if you increase your bids, you can improve your ad rankings faster.

  • Highlight specific benefits and features to increase your CTR (click-through rate). Ranking high is not the only factor that gets more clicks. You also need to create more feature-rich ads by highlighting the major benefits and features of your product or service.

  • Have a niche-approach strategy by being more specific and relevant. Relevant ads ensure that a small and highly targeted subsection of your audience is able to connect with your brand and its products or services. More accurate ad placements will bring in more quality leads.

  • Create different landing pages for different ad campaigns because Google monitors each of the landing page experiences rather than looking at the ads displayed on the search result pages.

Key Takeaways

To conclude, if you do it right, Google Ads can be a powerful tool for boosting your website traffic, brand awareness, and conversions. Take the algorithms and AdRank factors while adjusting your bids. To maximize your reach and clicks, create impactful ad texts, use highly relevant keywords, develop user-friendly landing page designs, and use proper ad extensions.

Updated on: 03-Apr-2023

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