Google Eliminates Right Side Ads

Google is no longer showing ads on the right hand side of their search results. Additionally, Google is showing four ads at the top of their results instead of just three for more popular commercial terms. These subtle changes may have not so subtle impacts on your search marketing.

Let’s take a deeper look at how these updates could impact both your paid search and organic search marketing.

1.) Potential For Increased PPC Exposure

Officially, “highly commercial queries” will have four ads shown at the top of the search results. I took a look at some of the keywords we focus highly on and the majority of them had four ads at the top of the search result. This is great news if your ads averaged top four rankings and were previously listed as the top right side ad result. You could likely be above the organic search results now. It’s also very important for you to look at which of your keywords average outside of the number four slot to see if you can get up above the organic listings.

2.) Potential For Decreased PPC Exposure

On the flip side, there are only 7 ads showing on a page instead of 11. That means if you were performing well in PPC but your ads were averaging spots 8-11, you’ll be knocked down to the second page of results. You’ll want to take a look at what you can do to improve your quality scores and increase your spend to get back into the 7^th spot (or higher) on the first page of results.

3.) Decreased Organic Exposure

With the potential for four ad results at the top of a search, each organic listing is ultimately dropped down a spot. If you have the top organic ranking and were previously the fourth overall result listed, you could now be the fifth result now with that potential fourth ad. What can you do? Not much. Make sure to write intriguing titles and descriptions for your pages (which you should be doing anyway) to encourage searchers to click your organic results instead of the ad results.

4.) PPC & Organic Listings Working In Tandem

Previously, the maximum amount of ads that could show on a search result was 11. Now there are only 7. That means the maximum listing for a search are now only 17 when you add in the 10 organic results. Why is this important? If you can get both your organic and PPC marketing in order, your site can have 2 out of just 17 spots for your most important keywords. That’s enormous exposure for your site!