There has been a lot of debate recently in “SEO News Land” (aka all the SEO blogs I subscribe to) about various testing Google has been doing, particularly with how they treat the display of their paid ads.
This morning I noticed something I hadn’t seen before and no one else in the office could re-create. (On a side note – is it just co-incidence that they picked the one SEO guy in the office to show it to? Time to buy me some tin foil and a baseball cap.) I thought I’d share the new vision of Google for all you guys (and gals) and see who was interested!
The change which Google Corp have made is two-fold. Firstly, they have moved the information on the search (like how many pages are competing, etc).
Why is this a big deal? Well it’s not really that drastic a change, however the more savvy readers will now be wondering what Google in all it’s glory has done with the top right of the page.
Now, this one is a little more interesting. Many of you will probably have seen the fiasco about Google showing its own URLs in search results; well, now they’ve fixed that. It appears that this is the new way they are thinking of promoting their Google Products services. Hmm. Interesting. At least it’s slightly less ‘in your face’ than including the results in the natural listings. My take on this? I don’t think Google will go for it. My reason? Not enough of the $$$ (or £££, where I come from). Basically, Google wants to get as many users to click through onto their products search as possible – but using this method they’re not really generating any decent titles, just a simple link to the products section. I think in the long run Google will try and integrate it with some more appealing links to get a higher CTR on these links. Of course, I could be wrong.
So, this brings me to the third change. This one’s another change to the display of paid adverts; there is no grey vertical bar next to the right hand PPC ads. It took me a little while to notice exactly what Google had changed on this one (I knew something had changed but couldn’t quite put my finger on it). I think this is another move very similar to the last one, which is aimed at trying to make the PPC ads ‘blend in’ with the organic listings. I think Google will go for this one, for the same reason I don’t think they’ll go for the one above. I think this will improve CTR on PPC ads, and, as we know, more clicks = +$$$/£££ for Google.
Anyone else seeing anything being tested? Anyone else have any comments on these changes?
