Is Google making room for something?
- August 13, 2009
- by Robert Weatherhead
Users of Google this week will have noticed a subtle change in the way the search results are laid out. More specifically Google appears to be trialling a new layout for the search results which narrows the left hand column containing the natural search results bringing the right hand set of paid search results closer.
Users of the Search Engine Watch forum suggest this is being done to test the impact on click through rate on the paid results and whilst I would suggest this may be the objective of the current trials, the bigger questions for me, is what is Google planning to do with the space it creates on its SERPs?
It seems to me that the move could also be paving the way for Google to integrate more elements within their SERPs and they are using the current test to see what impact this may have on paid search revenues.
So, what could Google be planning? Here are some potential suggestions of what they could do with the space.
Universal Search
A hot topic for a while now, and Google and the other search engines have been slowly introducing maps, images and video into their results in an attempt to make them as useful as possible. For the large part though these have been intermingled with the SEO results in the main area of the page, could Google be looking to use a new layout utilising this additional space?
More PPC anyone?
Highly unlikely as it would make the page too ad heavy, but Google could introduce another column of PPC results in the new space, potentially splitting out the national and local results. After all, these results are what earn Google its money.
Image based advertising
The Google homepage is hot property in terms of eyes, impressions, and user intent. Maybe they’re planning to bolster their placement network with some keyword based display advertising on the SERPs? They could certainly attract a few advertisers if they sold it at keyword level on a CPC basis.
Bing integration
Maybe Google is planning to follow Yahoo in giving up on the search game. Sell out to Microsoft for a small percentage share of revenue and concentrate on other areas……OK Maybe not!
DIGITAL MARKETING MATTERS
– Botta BING Botta Boom!
James
Nice ideas! But I doubt any of these are really likely. At present the most popular screen widths are 1280 and 1024 pixels. Even if the browser is maximised on these screens there won’t really be enough space for any of these. Maybe the skyscraper image ad is the most likely.
But Google gained much of their market share by the simplicity of their search page and to me all of these clutter the SERPs a little too much.