February 25, 2016: As reported earlier this week, Google has ditched the right rail sidebar area traditionally allocated to Adwords text ads. The right rail has been part of Google’s results page format since Adwords launched, so this change is — as Donald Trump would put it, “Yuuge.”
Consequently, SEOs and PPC managers have been furiously debating the impact of this change over the past several days. Let’s look at some of the choicest quotes on the issue:
PPC Implications
“Overall this move is going to effectively kill off less intelligent advertisers who to this point could get traffic with limited budget and/or poor campaign optimization sitting in the sidebar. If they try to increase budget to get top 4 in poorly optimized campaigns they will quickly go broke and bow out.” — Jeff C, commenting on a SearchEngineWatch.com article.
“The latest shift will force many brands and agencies to rethink their approach. Those who don’t will find traffic dwindling, and for those who do, expect to see an increase in average costs per click.” — Danny Meadows-Klue, quoted in an article on NetImperative.com.
“Google is cutting into the long tail of companies that spend money on PPC: firstly the requirements to successfully run PPC campaigns are higher and secondly because higher prices can only be sustained by companies with a market or aggregator model (Amazon, flight search engines, etc.) or by very strong brands that are able to translate paid clicks into meaningful results (revenue, in most cases).” — Peter Schneider, commenting on an Econsultancy article.
“The 4th spot will probably deliver similar overall revenue to the entire right rail. Plus it intensifies competition for the top slot, increasing auction pressure. All the more important to have a good bid management system in place, preferably one that can react to data in real time rather than batch every 24 hours.” — Kevin Lee, commenting on an article on Mediapost.com.
“If you want your precious brand traffic, you’re going to have to pay for it. ” — Aaron Levy, elitessem.com
“This announcement is a plus for audience targeting social outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. Social paid search has long been thought of as an ancillary source of traffic, rather than a primary one. If costs increase in Google, it will force advertisers to review social platforms to make up for lost traffic.” — Matt Umbro, PPCHero.com
SEO Implications
“Without a doubt, this change is bad news for anyone involved in SEO. Paid position #4 was the old organic position #1.” —Larry Kim, Wordstream.com
“PPC teams are possibly moaning about this change more than SEO teams… They suddenly have far fewer points of real-estate than before – with the whole RHS column gone and only ONE in its place. CPC will possibly rocket as demand outstrips supply. Therefore it will send far more people to organic which will be far more an efficient hit.” — Sam Silverwood-Cope, commenting on an article on SearchEngineWatch.com
“Google has been trying for some time to force SEO dollars to be spent on SEM instead since they make nothing off of organic listings. The added sitelinks and moved the map back to the middle of the page which forced organic listings below the fold and now this move will move organic listings even further down. “ — John Manes, commenting on an article on Wordstream.com
“Even if the additional in-line ads don’t replace organic listing, they will compete for attention, making SEO an even larger concern for marketers working to organically improve their brands’ visibility. How often have you read blogs titled “SEO is dead!” — Emily Delgado, ExaminerGazettec.com
“With less space on the side of the SERP for ads, and occasionally a fourth ad placed on the top of the screen, ranking on the first results page will become even more difficult. As organic results get squeezed and bumped down, the importance of consistently using long-tail, relevant keywords increases.” –Jon Simmons, The Content Standard
“While organic has moved down on some searches there’s a higher chance below the fold ads will get clicked on since there’s no sidebar ads to distract from them.” — Jeff C, commenting on an article on SearchEngineWatch.com
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