Changes to AdWords PPC SERPs

Matt Hopson

Posted 19 February, 2016 by in PPC

Changes to AdWords PPC SERPs

The PPC world is awash with excitement about changes to the Google search results page – scrapping the right-hand side column altogether for generic non-branded terms in favour of up to 4 ads above the natural results, and 3 at the bottom, similar to the mobile results page – but with an extra cherry ad on top.

We’ve been seeing 4 ads on the top of the results for a few days, (on Google and Bing), but today (Friday 19th February) is the first time the RHS ads have been dropped.

As can be seen in the images below, Google are still testing the new layouts, as they always do with layout changes, and as there is no official comment from Google yet, we must presume they haven’t decided whether implementing the change will have a positive influence on their revenue users’ behaviour.

We will update this post as we hear it, as well as any official comment from Google.

flights with RHS flights without RHS dog with RHS dog without RHS

After years of running PPC campaigns in pretty much every vertical, he has learnt that although people always claim to ‘never click on those ads’, they invariably do, which is great for his clients.

11 Comments

  • Doron Shenhav 9 years ago

    This move will definitely increase Google’s revenue. How it will affect the PPC & The SEO industries? we will find out soon enough :)

    Reply
  • Szymon 9 years ago

    Enter the “cheap flights” in Yahoo. I wonder if Google reaches the same level…

    Reply
    • Matt Hopson 9 years ago

      There are a lot of ads there aren’t there! I particularly like the way the RHS is ‘sticky’ & follows the scroll down the page o_O

      Reply
  • izhak agam 9 years ago

    Very interesting step, those competitors and less advertising space.

    Reply
  • Roger Olowski 9 years ago

    Obviously the more ads you can post, the more potential revenue can be made. I would not doubt if they made ad space really small to fit even more ads in.

    Reply
  • Jonathan 9 years ago

    I think it has already made a noticeable difference to PPC and click through rate of the paid ads – in terms of the suggested bids, provided by Google Adwords – I can definitely see an increase in the search volume also. Really intrigued to see Google’s next steps.

    Reply
  • Koen Bol 9 years ago

    I have already seen big increasement of the PPC for some client’s . It makes it harder for the smaller budgets. Interesting step from Google

    Reply
  • Adel Demian 9 years ago

    I think this has given clients more reason to do PPC campaigns, its going to make SEO or Organic rankings a lot harder as the organic results are mostly below the fold with 4 Ads on top.

    Reply
  • Trevor Stafford 9 years ago

    I’m sure there was an immediate revenue spike but people have quickly compensated with banner blindness. My first reaction was annoyance, now I don’t even notice the ads.

    Reply
  • Samrat Singh 9 years ago

    It will be really interesting to see how does this major PPC change impact on Google Adwords CTR and organic CTR. Surely this will help Google to make more revenue from their AdWords business.

    Reply
  • Chris Schimkat 9 years ago

    Very interested to see where the SERPs like “Cheap Flights” go in the future. So many cool new tools coming out straight from the search results.

    Reply

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