Average position
average position / where do we rank / ranking position / position in Search Console
Average position is the topmost position your page reached, averaged only across searches where it appeared at all. Google counts result blocks rather than places on the screen, and says ads occupy none of them. In advertising the metric is gone: Microsoft deprecated it in 2021 and now reports zero.
Google's definition is precise and the catch is in its last clause. The position in the Performance report is the topmost position occupied by a link to your property, averaged across all queries in which your property appeared. Its worked example: a query returning you at 2, 4 and 6 counts as 2, a query returning you at 3, 5 and 9 counts as 3, and the average is 2.5. Queries where you never appeared are not in the calculation at all, so the average can improve because you stopped showing up for the hard ones. Google adds the condition that makes this sharper: a link must get an impression for its position to be recorded, and a result sitting on page three that nobody scrolled to never gets one. A bad placement nobody saw is not averaged in as a bad placement. It is not averaged in at all.
Google anticipates the next question with a heading of its own, about a report saying position 5 when the person searching sees position 8. Its answer is that the reported figure is an average over all searches, and any one search differs because of variables like the searcher's history and location. Checking your own ranking by searching for yourself tests a different thing than the report measures.
Positions count blocks, not pixels. Google's schematic puts an AMP carousel at position 2, where every result inside it also has position 2, and a knowledge panel at position 6, where every link in the panel has position 6. Elements with no links, or only links that start another search, take no position at all. Neither do ads, which is why the number is unaffected by how much advertising sits above you.
In advertising the metric no longer exists. Microsoft states that AveragePosition is deprecated as of March 31st 2021 and that performance reports return an average position of zero going forward. Its replacements report how often an ad appeared at the top, not where it sat.
In practice
This is the number most often produced as proof of progress, and the easiest to improve by accident. A move from 8 to 4 alongside falling impressions usually means the site is appearing for fewer and easier searches, not ranking better. Read the two together, because impressions are what tell you whether the reach shrank.
Not the same as
- Where you appear on the screen
- Google warns that position 6 can be a knowledge panel in a prominent spot, and that in image results the same number means different rows on different screens.
- What you see when you search for yourself
- That is one search, shaped by your history and location, against an average of all of them.
Why it matters to you
Where do we rank has no single answer. There is an average over a set of searches that is itself changing, the number describes blocks rather than screen position, and in ads it was retired instead of improved. A report that shows average position without impressions beside it is showing half of a comparison, and the missing half is the one that says whether anyone still sees you.
What to ask or check
- 01What happened to impressions over the same period as the position change?
- 02Is this the same set of searches as last month, or a smaller one?
- 03If the figure comes from an ads report, is that column returning zero?
What people get wrong
That a falling average position always means better rankings. It also falls when a site stops appearing for the harder searches, because only the searches you appeared in are averaged.
Red flags
- An average position reported on its own, with no impression count beside it.
- A position figure from an ads platform, where the metric was deprecated in 2021.
- A ranking claim checked by searching for the business, which returns one result shaped by that person's own history and location rather than an average.
Who owns it
Google defines and calculates it, and says outright that the method of calculation might change. Nobody in your reporting chain controls the definition.
Where you will see it
The Performance report in Google Search Console, and in the monthly report an agency sends you.