Google Discontinues Ads in the Right Hand Side Bar

Google is rolling out some dramatic changes removing the ads from the right-hand side of search results on desktops. Adverts will now only appear on the top and bottom of the page, some good news is we now have 4 positions within this lucrative area. A Google spokesperson has confirmed that the change is now rolling out to all searches in all languages worldwide bringing the desktop experience closer to that on a mobile.

Originally Google AdWords only appeared on the right hand side of the search engine results page (SERP) however, with a growing number of products now available to advertisers, Google have rearranged the design to allow search on the left and product/knowledge based info on the right.

We think it is possible that Google are reducing the prices available in the auction from 7 or 8 results to only 4 therefore increasing the competition within the bidding war. The move will also provide additional space for its new services including hotel booking engines, insurance comparisons and other new technologies currently being developed.

Getextra have been invited to Google’s London office next Wednesday and we will try and find out a little more about the future plans for this space going forward. Watch out for another update in a few weeks time.

A statement from google says;

“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.”