Scrolling through the most recent marketing news segments I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that Google was deleting its sidebar ads. Searching hectically through the whys and hows, however, I soon realized that this may just be better for marketers.

When Google announced the big changes in February, it caused quite a bit of disturbance… after all, nobody knew how this would affect CPC and CTR campaigns. Where would the ads that were located in the sidebar go? Would they just vanish and never come back? (Of course not!) Google announced that from now on, there would be four text ads on the top of the search result page and three text ads on the bottom.

Google’s Product Listing Ads, however, are safe: they will occupy the sidebar, mostly with photos. The Knowledge Panel will also remain unaffected. Google started to experiment with moving around the ads way back, in 2010.

They will keep toying with new layouts and smaller changes, so that ads will be more effective.

Goodbye, Google Sidebar Ads! Photo Credit Searchengineland

In past times, there were a total number of 11 text ads available per search page, which has now been reduced to seven. From a CPC/CTR marketer’s viewpoint, the change is a good thing: presumably, people tend to pay more attention to what’s directly in front of them (let’s be honest, we don’t really look at the sidebar ads.) However, from an SEO perspective, the changes will push many search results to the second page (and it’s a well-known fact that people don’t often click on the second, third and fourth search pages.)

Product Listings are Safe. Photo Credit Tamebay

Let us consider the followings with regards the novelties:

1. Probably, it will all be better this way, resulting in more effective ads – it is in Google’s interest to improve their service that we pay for, after all.
2. More people are using their smartphones to navigate through the Internet than ever – and that number will be increasing in the future. Erasing all the sidebar ads will result in a better mobile experience, with ads that are more visible.