Google continues to test different methods of displaying AdWords ads. I am certain Google is keen to provide a better user experience for the browser. I am also certain they are keen to look after their AdWords advertisers (and their bottom line) by increasing the percentage of people that click on the pay-per-click ads as opposed to the natural search engine results.
Browser vs. Advertiser. A tricky balance.
As both an AdWords campaign manager and a search engine user, I sometimes take issue with the changes Google makes. I am probably wrong to take issue. No doubt Google employs the best usability, design and information architecture experts they lay hands on.
The future of it concerns me though. We can’t tell what search engines will be like ten years from now, nor what the internet will look like as a whole. Some of the most relevant and valuable websites do not perform AdWords advertising. It is not within their budget or even their business model. It grieves me to think a not for profit organisation like wikipedia.org would be disadvantaged in the search results or get less exposure because a search engine unfairly promotes the advertisements.
No doubt I will soon become used to the changes and forget my initial dissatisfaction.
In the meantime, I would like to say that Google may sometimes lose sight of an important aspect of the search engine mandate. Be warned, this is not the official mandate. This is my own idealized view. A search engine should list the most relevant matches to the user’s search query and then allow them to choose which one matches their desire most. I know that spamming and black-hat (and sometimes white-hat) SEO techniques also contravene this mandate and Google does their best to deal with these issues. However, the AdWords platform is definitely under their control and the most recent changes to AdWords Ads feel a little like I am being peddled too rather than presented with data to draw my own conclusions from.
So What’s New?
This is a set of normal (before the most recent change) advertisements:
I am going to skip back a bit here. Back in February, Google promoted the first description line of the ads to be appended to the headline for certain ads appearing directly above the naturals. I thought this was amusing because the Google reasoning mentioned in their blog post was “…making a change to certain ads that will allow you to display more information where it’s more likely to be noticed – in the headline”. Why not make the whole ad a headline then? What would be the point? Sorry, just thought it was funny. The real reason behind this change, in my book, was to make the ad titles look more like the title line of the natural results. To their credit, Google did not implement this change haphazardly. It only triggers when each line of the ad appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in proper punctuation.
Now! On to the most recent “append URL to title” change. Here is what it looks like:
Certain AdWords Ads above the natural results will have the URL appended. It triggers when a few requirements are met, basically overall character limits, the ad being above the naturals, and if you haven’t already put your URL in the title of your ad.
My main issue with this change, is that it does not merely seek to make the ads look more natural, but it goes beyond what information is provided in the natural results. The naturals don’t get this doubled-up exposure. In fact, it’s redundant. I do not need the URL pushed in my face a second time. I can read. I guess I will just have to monitor over the coming weeks whether this change boosts the click through rates in the campaigns I manage and whether there is a positive effect on conversion rates. If that is the case, I will console myself with the knowledge my clients will be happier, and that is good consolation. However, the search engine user in me is upset with Google right now. Rant over.