How Changes to Google Ads Could Affect You

Google have revealed, and indeed they have started to roll out, some changes to the way in which adverts are going to be displayed on the search engine results pages. Now, those ads have been a staple of their income since time began so any change to them is going to have at least some kind of an impact on how effective they are and, from a website owner point of view, it is important that you understand the differences it could make to you.

As you will undoubtedly be familiar with the layout up until now then you will already know that adverts appear at not only the top of the page, but also down the right hand side. However, the big difference is that Google are planning on scrapping those adverts down the side and increasing the number of adverts that appear on the top of the page.

To many this sounds like it is going to make life even harder to be noticed if you use Adwords as part of your marketing campaign, but fear not because that is actually not the case.

Instead, Google have been more intelligent about it all than you may initially have thought. Indeed, they have conducted extensive research with their own information and have come to the conclusion that people using desktop devices to go online are just not really too concerned about the adverts down the side of the page.

Now, mentioning desktop is important because this change to the layout is only going to affect people in that situation and nowhere else. Indeed, there are several types of marketers that are going to benefit from these changes and from an Internet marketing point of view it is extremely useful to look at them to understand if you are included.

1. Pay Per Click Marketers.

If you are using pay per click, which basically means Adwords in the way it is intended, then you are going to benefit from these changes. Why? This is because according to statistics only 14.6% of all clicks on adverts on these search engine pages involve people clicking on adverts either at the side or the bottom of the page.

Furthermore, it is accepted that those adverts at the top of the page get 14x the number of clicks than the exact same advert that appears on the side.

If you are still concerned about this, then you also have to take into consideration the fact that it does only include desktop searches and that now accounts for only approximately half of all Internet searches. In other words, you are looking at a click-thru rate closer to 7% of all searches being linked to those side adverts, so it is hardly going to be a big loss to Google

2. Local Adverts.

Another group that will benefit are those individuals that are seeking to advertise locally because it appears that the changes have been designed to better reflect local companies with adverts that are going to be far more useful to the average searcher.

As an Internet marketer this is something that you will be able to take advantage of since you can really pinpoint your market and you are much more likely to then have your advert displayed to the correct people. By all accounts, this should mean that you will see a better ROI on your adverts and there should not be too many changes with the overall cost of getting this better ad placement.

3. Being in Position 3 is Best.

This is a rather interesting point, as well as being further evidence of how this change is going to be so beneficial to so many people. According to studies carried out on the click-thru rate in trials, the advert in position three out of four saw the biggest increase in number of clicks received. This appears to have increased by roughly 15% with it beating the fourth position quite handsomely which came as a surprise to analysts.

However, if position three is also a shopping advert, then it has been further shown that these adverts have also had a substantial increase in the number of clicks with it increasing by some 4% in the month of February alone.

All of this sounds great, but everything that Google does regarding changes will always mean that there is, in some way, somebody that wins from it and somebody that loses out. In this instance, it has been shown that general SEO of a website can be affected and that is a problem.

What this means is that it is important that you have your own website SEO checked by an expert team that is fully aware of the changes to the paid search results pages and can make the appropriate changes to prevent your website from being hit in a negative manner. Leave it too long and not only will you perhaps find it difficult to get your advert noticed, but when your website starts to fall down the rankings it means your organic clicks will suffer as well.