Google has recently confirmed that from the 19th of February they will be removing all ad placements on the right hand side of their search results. According to ‘The media Image’, this change for Google has been worked on for a while and has been put through UI testing. Don’t worry mobile users you won’t see much of a change, and the right hand ads is more of a change for the desktop browsers. Below you can see the differences from before and after the release date.
This is an interesting move by Google, but will mostly affect those bidding for placements in their AdWords service, prices may rise in the near future as there are less places to bid for. This will be interesting for the smaller companies as the will be more affected by the lack of ads on search queries. Large retailers have a broader range of keyword coverage and usually have larger amount to spend and use on bids for keyword placement. This could leave smaller businesses in lower positions and lower amount of clicks.
Organic searches
Currently there is no true answer for how this change will actually affect the list of organic search results. However many have pointed out that the change from 3 to 4 ads at the top of search results will push organic results further down the page. As a result organic searches could negatively impact organic traffic, but we won’t be sure until stats can be taken in after the change.
So In The End..
Google’s market position is based on consistently relaying the most relevant results for every search query made with them. By removing the side ads they are creating a higher click through rate for the top positions and so more people will be bidding for them. It should also encourage bidders to create more relevant ads so that they don’t increase their bounce rate. This will help Google deliver the best result and provide the searcher with less bothersome ads. This could be a great move for Google but we still are waiting to see how it will affect everyone else.