As numerous sources have confirmed, effective Friday, February 19, Google has decided to no longer show AdWords ads on the right hand side of its results page. Google will only show them at the top and bottom of the search engine’s results page, and may increase the number of ads from three to four if the search query is considered to be “highly commercial”.
Google removes SERP’s right hand side ads
This roll-out will definitely affect users of different languages worldwide and will also bring desktop experience closer to mobile experience.
For regular users, the right hand space will still be used for Product Listing Ads as well as knowledge Graph Boxes. Therefore, you won’t notice much of a difference. However, with this roll-out, organic listings being pushed further down may be an issue to most of us.
On the other hand, businesses may need to focus more on SEO because of this update. And for paid search advertisers, the change will most probably drive up average CPCs as the competition for the top slots increases.
The complete and permanent roll-out will be finalized on February 22. And according to The Media Image, one of the first to break the story, the reason behind this update may be because it was determined by Google that the average click-through-rate for Right Hand Side Ads is poor across verticals, and the expected CPC inflation from this major change is projected to be more profitable in the long run.