Around the start of March 2016, Google made an innovative change to the way adverts for Google AdWords appear on their search engine results. Instead of having three adverts appear above organic results and and smaller adverts appear as a separate sidebar to the right of the search results, Google opted to remove the right hand side adverts altogether and increase the number of adverts that can appear above organic results to 4. From adopting this, it has appeared that Google AdWords has seen an increase in the click through rate of the adverts on their search results for all of the four advertising positions albeit one.
 

The Statistics

The analysis, which was performed by a company called AccuraCast, looked at over 500,000 individual searches across a range of different markets before and after the change from Google was implemented. What AccuraCast found was that:

• The top spot for paid search had an increase in CTR of 8.4%
• Position two had an increase in CTR of 7.7%
• Position four had the biggest increase in CTR with a staggering 18.2%
• However, position three had a decrease to its CTR of 5.6%

What Does this Mean for Advertisers?

The results from this study are very interesting indeed and can be explained, for that matter, too. It is obvious that both the number one and two spots for paid results will increase since they will always sit above the fold on search results – with the right hand side adverts completely removed, the competition above the fold (number of adverts appearing) has decreased which will naturally result in the top two positions having an increase in their click through rates respectively.
It is clear from the study that the position which is closest to organic search results seems to perform well. This could be explained due to the fact that a proportion of web users are prone to scrolling past search adverts to get to organic search results. However, as much as they want to ‘block’ out the adverts, the one closest to the first organic result will always be difficult to block out.
What is interesting is the fact that position three had declined in terms of it’s click through rate performance. With four adverts being adopt for AdWords instead of three, position 2 is not the only advert that is surrounded by two other adverts above and below it. Be this as this may, below is a potential reason for position three not performing as well after the AdWords change:

• As we know, position one increased predominantly because there is less adverts showing from the removal of the RHS adverts sidebar.
• The same can be applied for position 2.
• Position 4 is closest to organic search results so is the closest to being seen as an organic search result.
• Position 3 is now sitting in a boat where it has two paid search adverts to compete against above it and is no longer closest to the top of organic search results. For this reason, position three is a bit of a ‘dead’ zone for adverts to now appear on search engine results.