Are Google’s paid results getting too cluttered?
Google are enhancing their paid results listings in all sorts of ways, presumably to increase the click-through rate (and their revenue, of course…).
First, they introduced the subtly highlighted box above the organic results, reserved for up to three advertisers who achieve a sufficiently high Quality Score:
Next they added locations:
Then it was the Google Checkout logo to advertisers who accept payment that way:
And now we’re starting to see two new additions: site links and product results.
Site links have been an element of organic results for a while now, but I’ve not seen them in paid links before today (thanks @savamaloy and @judithlewis for the tweets).
Google have reportedly been testing product links for a while now, but it’s only very recently that I’ve seen them in the UK results:
None of my clients have this feature enabled in their accounts yet, so I can’t gauge what effect product links have on CTR or conversions, but discussions around the web seem to indicate that not many searchers actually click on the [+] button to expand the listing.
This feature prompts some interesting questions:
- How will Google charge for a click on the [+]?
- Will they devise some measurement that’s more than an impression but less than a click?
- Will a click on the [+] but no subsequent click-through harm the advertiser’s Quality Score more or less than simply incurring an impression without a click?
I wonder whether this move away from the simple design principles that have served them so well (see Simplicity is Powerful) so far are being compromised in the quest for extra revenue. If they are, how will searchers respond – will they flee to the competition?