20 February, 2016, USA: Google has finally decided to take out ‘Right Hand Sidebar’ advertisement. The company officially has started notifying its advertisers that it is closing down the right hand gutter (sidebars) advertisement. Instead, Google will only show 1 – 4 ads above the fold and force the rest to the bottom of the results page.
Though the company has not announced the change publicly, but many AdWords representatives have confirmed the change made by the company by calling it ‘global and permanent’. The experts feel that the segment which will be affected by the change will be high volume and general search. However, long-tail and niche terms will begin to see their right hand ads disappear in the coming weeks. In addition to the ads at the top (above the fold), Google has added ads at the bottom of each SERP as well, reports Search Engine Journal.
This will also affect the ads which are appearing beneath third or fourth position as the user might not go that far and this may result in a decline in click-through rate. Google has made the necessary changes to the desktop search results pages only. The company has decided to not to change the layout for the mobile ads for a time being.
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