How to See Ad Rank in Google Ads? (2024)

If you have been advertising with Google for a while, you know already that Ad Rank has a big role in determining the success of your campaigns.

Therefore, you need to have a clear picture of each of your keyword’s Ad Rank.

Here, I am going to answer one of the frequently asked questions: how to see Ad Rank in Google ads.

So, by the end of this article, you should be able to base your decisions considering Ad Rank and its factors.

Table of Contents

A quick intro to Ad Rank

Ad Rank is a ranking system used by Google ads to determine the rank of your ads. Those ads can appear on the SERP (search engine results page) or on websites if they are display ads.

Google ads calculates your Ad Rank in real-time whenever someone makes search queries with the keywords that you are targeting.

Ad Rank calculation includes the following factors:

Your max CPC – the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a keyword
Ad quality (has the same components as Quality score)
Ad Rank thresholds – the minimum required Ad Rank to be eligible to participate in the auctions
The competitiveness of an auction – the competition and their bid prices can affect your bid price and Ad Rank as well
Context of the search query – user attributes using a particular keyword (e.g. device, time zone), nature of the keyword, etc.
Expected impact of extensions and other ad formats – certain ad extensions can affect your ad quality and your Ad Rank

Those are some of the main factors out of hundreds that affect your Ad Rank in real time.

Many of them are only known to Google ads but there a few that can give you an idea of how your campaigns are performing or which factors can improve your Ad Rank more than others.

How to check Ad Rank in Google ads?

There is no indicator or a certain number of Ad Rank in your Google ads account that shows its performance as you see with keyword Quality score. Google ads doesn’t disclose that number.

But, the hope is not lost. There are a few ways to gauge your performance yourself.

First clear indicator of your Ad Rank

The first thing to get an idea about your Ad Rank is:

Logging into your Google ads account
Under Ad Groups section, you can see auction insights

Here from the auction insights report of Google ads, we are getting the top-spot compared to the competition

By adding the necessary columns, you can have a clear picture of how your ads are performing

You can estimate your Ad Rank

As we know, there are hundreds of factors involved when calculating your Ad Rank.

To get your estimated Ad Rank, you can get the list of some of the factors that are included in the Ad Rank calculation and find those metrics from your Google ads account.

How to get your estimated Ad Rank from your Google ads account?

You can do that by looking at your statistics table, which should include the columns

that can impact the most on the quality of your ads.

Some of the main factors to look for from your statistics table are as follows:

Bid amount – your bid amount (CPC) has a direct effect on your Ad Rank. The more you spend, the higher your Ad Rank is going to be. If your CPC is higher than average or close to its max CPC that means your Ad Rank might be low or it barely ranks at its current position on the SERP. Therefore, every advertiser should try to increase his Ad Rank without increasing the max CPC too much.
Quality score (QS) and its components – They have a direct effect on your Ad Rank and they are the components that can have the most impact on the Ad Rank calculation. You can estimate your Ad Rank by looking at the scores of each of those metrics. Also, you can only add those columns on the keyword level and there are 8 types of them: the QS, its components and all of their historical performances.
Conversion metrics – Although, Google ads doesn’t look at your conversion metrics to come up with your Ad Rank, it signals how well your headlines, landing pages are performing and measures the relevancy of your ads to the intent of the users coming to your website. So, if you have a higher than average conversion rate, it means your ads are more relevant and your Ad Rank is probably higher than your competitors’ rank. Likewise, you can estimate a lower Ad Rank, when you have a lower than average conversion rate.

To change your Ad Rank considerably, you need to change your Ad quality (or Quality score).

Ad Rank formula myth

When people talk about Ad Rank, you may hear them talking about Ad Rank formulas and how to calculate your Ad Rank.

In reality, none of those theories are correct and their calculations are based on 2-3 factors like your max Bid, QS, actual CPC.

You can’t calculate your Ad Rank. Only Google ads knows it and calculates it in real-time when a search query happens.

Let’s see some of the reasons why the formula doesn’t make sense.

It uses only 3 factors in the calculation, while there are hundreds of them
According to Google, Ad Quality is used in the real-time calculation instead of Quality score and they both can be quite different and measured on a different scale.
You don’t know the max CPC of your competitors

Conclusion

It is important to know your Ad Rank when running your campaigns.

Although you cannot find an Ad Rank column in your Google ads account, you can check it by looking at auction insights report and estimate it by looking at the performance of some of its indicators.

For now, that is all we can do.

However, those indicators would be enough to get your estimated Ad Rank, if you have enough account history and know the trends of your industry.

Do you know any other way of estimating your Ad Rank performance?

Let me know in the comments section below…

For any help in your Google ads management, you can reach me out through the Contact page.

Share it