You may not have noticed it, but last week Google made an update to the look of the search results page. More specifically, Google changed the “Ad” label next to text ads on the SERPs from yellow to green. This switch has been in the testing phase since April and was rolled out across all countries on both desktop and mobile. Veteran search marketers will remember that the yellow ad icon has been in place since 2013 when the icon replaced the yellow shading treatment that search ads had previously been given.
Then:
Now:
Google has said they’re continuously making updates to help improve the look and feel of the search results page. While this may be a small change, and unlikely to have much of an impact on ad performance, it represents the latest in a long trend of Google testing new SERP features. This includes many Paid and Organic updates that are featured on the PMG blog. Case in point: this & this
In case you didn’t read those links, major changes of the last few months include the addition of a 4th ad to the top of search results and the removal of right hand side ads. Something else we can also expect in the coming weeks is the full rollout of expanded text ads.
With well established market dominance and the ability to basically do whatever they please it’ll be interesting to see what Google chooses to do next. One thing that is nearly certain is that whatever Google does you’ll more than likely find one of us PMG-ers blogging about it.