Google Ads To Become More Relevant And Straight To The Point

The search engine giant, Google, declared their intention to place more paid ads on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) during a candid conversation between a group of computer enthusiasts including professionals and Google topshot Matt Cutts who participated in an interesting discussion in a "Hacker News thread", in response to an article from Jitbit, called, "Google Search is only 18% Search". Matt Cutts defended the decision saying, relevant paid ads are often more useful than search results. He backed it with an example of the search result for "ATT cordless phones" where paid ad proved to be more useful than even the topmost ranked website. He also pointed out that there are "tons of searches" where Google doesn't show ads. I actually verified the last claim myself. I Googled for my name which I share with a prominent poet. Against my expectations, Google didn't show me where I can buy his books online. No ads!

On the other hand, Alex Yumashev, the author of the article behind this uproar, showed how Google has reduced the screen real estate for the organic search results from 53% to a surprising 18.5%. In other words, only 1/5th of the page shows search results and remaining area displays other information like Knowledge Graph, Search Plus Your World, Gmail results and of course paid ads. More paid ads mean even lesser search result on the SERP. Many website administrators and computer professionals are already finding it alarming.

There are two points to note. Mr Yumashev conceded that he used the example of a SERP which has a high ad density. Mr Cutts on the other hand stressed the point that Google takes utmost care to place ads in subtle and non-intrusive way and Google also make sure the ads the relevant and have a good destination page. When we combine these points together the allegation against Google is somewhat subdued.

SEO companies are getting ready for this planned shift in a different way. As Google will be displaying more ads means ads will be more prominently placed and there are more chances than ever to get a click on the ad. Thus, along with bringing up the website in the organic search result using the traditional SEO techniques, companies may have to shell out more money to get a part of the sponsored results section of the SERP.

Will more clutters on an already heavily cluttered Google SERP please the user by being useful like most of the Google products or will they move to Bing who is frantically trying to get a bigger share of the search engine market pie? Only time can tell and we, at Search Eccentric, are eagerly waiting.

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As Google Displays Fewer Results, Getting to the Top Is Even More Important

Search engines are changing all the time, and none more so than the world's most popular - Google. So although users and search engine optimisation specialists may have grown used to there being 10 results per page on Google search queries, they may have to adjust to there being significantly less.

'Make sure you're in the top ten on Google' has become something of a mantra in search engine marketing over the years, but soon it may be a cosier option to ensure you're in the top seven. Though there have been occasional search engine results pages (SERPs) with less than ten results for some time now, according to research by Peter Meyers over at SEOmoz, the number of SERPs on Google with just seven results jumped from 0.1% to 18.3% over just two days in mid-August. At present, he says, almost 20% of SERPs monitored by SEOmoz have only seven results.

So what's taking the place of those extra results?

In short, anything that Google believes to be useful to users. Expanded search results where other sub-pages of the same site are listed, image results in the main body of the search results and other 'improvements' are all appearing more frequently for some search terms. And because Google knows that users don't like to scroll down too far, in some instances their pushing results 8-10 back to page two.

While this isn't affecting all searches currently - it predominantly, but not exclusively, affects brand searches - it's something to pay close attention to. The difference in traffic and conversions between appearing at the bottom of page one and the top of page two can be significant, so it's worth checking your key search terms and keywords to see if they've been affected by Google's leaner results page.

As for what you can do to avoid being pushed out of page one, the answer is simple: try harder. If Google sees fit to only show seven results instead of ten, the best (and only) thing you can do is to do everything you can to rank somewhere between one and seven - ideally the former.

If you're website is cruising around the bottom of page 1 and you're concerned about being relegated to page 2, speak to your SEO agency to find out how you can diversify your strategy to make sure that regardless of the results shown on each page, your business will stay on page on of the SERPS.

You can view the data in full at (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serp-crowding-shrinkage-its-not-your-imagination).

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