Google Paid Search Results Change
Google Paid Search Results Change
March 8, 2016
On February 24th Google announced a change it the way it would display its paid search results.What changed:
- No more ads appearing on right hand side for Desktop devices. Tablet & Mobile Devices are not affected.
- Only PLAs (Google Shopping Ads) now appear on the right hand side.
- There will be a 4thad appearing at the top for high volume search queries, remaining ads will appear at the bottom of the page under the fold.
What does this mean for advertisers?The results are very mixed across sectors & clients. Stellar Search can only speculate, but currently we are thinking:
- Ads that were appearing in positions 4-9 on the right hand side will now drop below the fold. As a result we expect traffic volumes and CTR to drop.
- Ads that were appearing in positions 1-3 will suffer from increased CPC’s which will result in higher CPA’s / decrease in ROI. This is due to advertisers and bid technology systems recalibrating their bids and bidding up for the top positions making the auctions more competitive.
- SEO results that appear in top positions will be pushed further down the Google result page at the introduction of the 4thad appearing at the top.
The right hand side ads have shifted down the page:
It's an interesting update from Google. Stellar Search are still monitoring the effects of this change but initial findings are looking like:
- CPC's are increasing for top positions for advertisers as the auctions are becoming more competitive to appear in these top positions.
- Natural rankings for the P1 position CTR has dropped slightly as it is appearing further down the page, but CTR for natural rankings in positions 2-8 is actually increasing as they aren't competing with the PPC ad's on the right hand side.
In terms of actions for advertisers, it means that they need to be more tacitcal about their bidding to appear in top positions at times of the day when they see best conversion rates and then drop back down to positions 5 or below at poor converting times to maxamise their budgets. Stellar Search's bidding algorithm Scripts can help advertisers automate this process to give them the competitive edge in the Google auctions.For more information on Stellar Scripts, please contact us at: hello@stellarsearch.co.uk.You can learn more here about the recent updates from Google.
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