Google Bottom Placements – No Need To Panic

Last week Google announced that some side-positioned ads would now show at the bottom. It’s an interesting development and one that has some advertisers reeling, but what does it really mean? Here’s our take on it:

1. Most side ads have not been moved

The initial reaction to this announcement by Google seemed to be a lot of concern that CTR would die a death unless you weren’t in the top 3, that CPC would rise accordingly and the knock on effect this would have could be catastrophic. In reality, we’re barely seeing any bottom placement ads so no need to panic just yet. Even some of the most reputable sources, such as E-consultancy, are scaremongering that side ads are to be ‘dropped’. This is really slack blogging and isn’t true!

2. Google are sure they are increasing CTR

Google’s key statement here is:

On average, this placement performed better than side ads in terms of click-through rate in our tests.

Google have found that, in many cases ‘displaying ads below search results fits better into the user’s flow as they scan the page from top to bottom’. A bit more information about how and when this applies would be nice and this appears to be the seed of most online consternation… but we should trust Google on this as their overall objective has always been to increase ad impressions and user experience.

Our Advice

Our advice is to monitor your CTR, run weekly or monthly comparisons and see. We’ve heard of some users seeing a decrease in side-position CTR and an increase in top-position CTR. Much like when instant search came out, the bloggers are clamouring for a story when, in reality, barely anything is changing. Like all updates to the Google search pages, it’s something we should all be monitoring, but let’s not get carried away!

We believe that, provided you’re paying good attention to your quality score, then you’ll be fine. We can’t say for sure, but it does seem like bottom of the page placements seem to happen for broad searches such as ‘training’ or ‘presents’, where overall relevance and quality score would surely be low across the board. This by no means proven, but it is our early hunch based on a few tests we’ve been doing. Google will always reward a good quality score so always take the necessary steps to maximise it.