In the world of search engines, testing makes the world go around it seems. Yahoo has been running a new test on search ads in which the display URL isn’t displayed in the ads. the odd part is this though, the display URLs aren’t removed on all the ads within a SERP. There are still some ads that still have a display URL showing.
BrandVerity, a paid search brand monitoring firm, spotted the test, and captured a screenshot, which can be seen above.
If you noticed, the three highlighted areas show that there is no display URL to speak of, but yet, there are still display URL on other search text ads. Why would they take test taking off the display URLs on some ads, but not others? It does seem strange.
If this at all seems alarming, don’t worry. BrandVerity says they managed to replicate it manually, but not consistently, on brand searches for QVC, Gamehouse, Overstock.com, PCMmaill.com, CDW.com and J. Crew.