Google Changes Ad Display On Search Results

Search Engine Land recently posted an article detailing a major change in how Google is now displaying AdWords ads in the search results. From the article:

Google is rolling out a dramatic change that removes ads from the right side of its desktop search results, and places ads only at the top and/or bottom of the page. At the same time, the company says it may show an additional ad — four, not three — above the search results for what it calls “highly commercial queries.”

In our very non-scientific and limited testing (meaning I just tried a bunch of searches in different cities we have clients), larger cities – say around 100,000 or so – tend to have 4 ads at the top of the page for searches like “dentist CityName”, while smaller ones typically only have 3.

What isn’t discussed in the article, and what many marketers are wondering, is what will the reduced number of ads do to the average cost per click for running AdWords ads? Since the ad prices are done via bid, the assumption is that less available ad space = higher price per click to run ads. Of course, removal of the side ads is at least a partial admission that the lower priced side ads weren’t terribly effective anyway.

So whether or not PPC ad costs will go up as a result of the new display format (and let’s be honest – Google doesn’t make any change unless it is designed to increase their bottom line), one thing that is for sure is that the value of showing up in the organic results for desirable searches has just gone up.

If you are interested in bringing new visitors to your website and new patients to your practice, contact us about a free dental SEO audit today!