Take this and let’s move it over an inch. It doesn’t sound like much of a change, but for Google, it’s huge. Google recently moved their ads over to the left a skosh, snuggling them closer to the organic results like Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey after a long day of shopping. While the average user probably noticed nothing, we in the search marketing industry have obsessed over what this change might mean for campaigns.
Below are some screenshots of this fabulous makeover. Seems pretty mild, huh? It helps if you look at the top of the frame in each shot…
Before:
After:
We decided to compile data across all of our campaigns to see exactly what effect this seemingly tiny move would have, and what impact it might have for Google’s coffers. We excluded our auto industry data due to all the hoopla that was cash for clunkers – an unusual occurrence that is likely to skew that particular data set.
The results? A whopping 14.47% increase in click-throughs from the 11-day period preceding the change vs. 11 days after the change.
The data was pulled from a Wednesday to Sunday to control for any day-of-week trends and any keywords with positions that changed by more than .5 were excluded.
Although the effect on Google’s revenue remains to be seen, it is obvious that Google can continue to make more money despite the recession and the occasional gloomy analyst. If the early indications are accurate and a close to 15% rise in clicks holds across the line, the impact on billions of dollars of revenue should be substantial. It may be time to buy some more GOOG.
Tags: Google, Mariah Carey, Money, Nick Cannon, Revenue, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines, Searching
I would be interested to know the position the majority of your ads were in that experienced such a large gain. Does this mean I can lower my avg bid position slightly and still get the same visits?
funny because when we asked Google about this change, they couldn’t give us a specific answer to exactly when this change took place. Actually their exact response was “Google is constantly experimenting with the look & feel of its results
page. This left-shift of the ads is an experiment and was reported in the
blogosphere on sites including SearchEngineLand [1] and TechCrunch. [2]
At this time, we do not know anything more with respect to whether this
experiment will become permanent or not.”
But yes, the lift in CTRs has been dramatic on our accounts as well.
Really interesting stuff, indeed. Great comment, too.
It is amazing to see how much a little change can really make in online behavior. This goes to show you that making changes and tweaks to any website is important.