Google Shakes Up their Search Engine Results Pages

You may have heard that Google no longer includes paid ads on the right side of their search results pages. Well let me confirm that it is true. You may have also heard that the real estate for organic or natural search results is shrinking. Well let me confirm that that is also true. Google is now including up to four Paid Ads with top of page results. Oh and by the way, the bottom of the page ads are remaining.

So what does it all mean for you as an advertiser? At this point we can only speculate, but we can use market forces to help guide our thinking. It is likely that this change was revenue driven as Google works to monetize more of the search results pages. However this change may – due to a cleaner interface, improve the search experience. After all Google is a smart company and changes are likely designed to benefit both the searcher and the advertiser.

In the short term many SEO and PPC experts are predicting a rise in Cost Per Click rates. That makes sense since everyone is competing for less real estate. We are also likely to see an increase in competition for the coveted remaining organic spots. Great content, Back Links, and a high website authority rating will be critical for ranking in the top three organic spots.

At Front Man Marketing, we believe it’s important not to panic and to keep this change in perspective. We saw some data from WordStream’s Larry Kim that suggests that less than 15% of clicks are impacted by the change. Many PPC and SEO experts believe that the low percentage of clicks generated by the side and bottom of the page ads played a role in Google’s decision to make the change.

So keep calm. With this change Google will now allow all ads to include ads extensions such as call outs, location extensions, and sitelinks – not just those ads at the top of the page. This is good news. Give us a call or complete our contact us form. Front Man Marketing can design an expert campaign for you and your business that will generate conversions.