It was reported late last week that Google is rolling out a dramatic change to their search results that removes ads from the right side of the desktop results. Instead, ads are only placed at the top and/or bottom of the page. The company is also saying that there could be an additional ad – four, not three – placed above the search results for what they are calling “highly commercial queries.”
The new ad placements represents the conclusion of a test that started back in 2010, and has been tweaked over the years since the test first began. there were certain individuals, especially those outside of the US, that said last year that they were seeing the top-only ads more frequently.
A Google spokesperson confirmed that the change was rolling out to all search in all languages worldwide last week. Ads aren’t appearing on the right side of desktop search results. The only exceptions to this change includes:
- Product Listing Ad (PLA) boxes, which show either above or to the right of search results
- ads in the Knowledge Panel
The fourth ad that may appear above the search results will only appear for highly commercial queries. This is from an official statement from Google:
“We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.”
The removal of right-side ads will impact each and every desktop search done through Google worldwide. Regarding the fourth ad that will appear over the search results will happen for “highly commercial queries,” such as “hotels in New York City” and “car insurance,”