29 August 2008
Google testing ads at the bottom of the search results
Bloggle-worthy (i.e funny) news has been hard to come by the past few days and I’ve been reluctant to post things you’ve probably just read elsewhere. But you might not have seen this…
Search Engine Roundtable reported today that people were seeing Adwords ads being shown at the bottom of the search results. It seems that Google have been testing it out and a Google representative did acknowledge that this was true in a Webmaster World forum thread.
I’ve tried to find what domain/queries it was tested on but with no luck yet. According to those who have seen it, it has been on Google.com.au and Google.de. In fact, Search Engine Roundtable linked to a screenshot of one of the ads.
I find it strange that search engines would place ads at the bottom of the results. It is something that Yahoo already do but as an advertiser I wouldn’t be too happy if my ad appeared the bottom, even if it was page 1. I think I’d probably have a much better chance of being click by being at the top of page 2 rather than the bottom of page 1, and even though it would probably mean less traffic, it should mean that my ads would be cheaper.
I doubt it will change the normal user experience very much, but it is certainly quite a major change to the Google page.
For some further reading, Barry Schwartz has a few theories about this at Search Engine Land.