AdWords Position Preference Being Retired!
I was never a big fan of position preference.
Which is just as well, as Google are withdrawing the option to use it as of the 5th of April 2011.
The pitfalls of using position preference are quite neatly summed up in the following from the Google Inside AdWords blog –
An ad with a larger average position may perform better than an ad with a smaller average position…
Increasing a bid may improve page position but not auction position…
A bid increase may move your average position lower on the page…
An average is not always the best way to summarize a distribution of positions…
In summary, average position is a popular metric, but don’t rely on it alone as a measure of performance. The metrics that really matter are clicks, costs, and conversions.