Google’s Search and Ads are changing, Here’s What You Need To Know

Google recently announced a few changes that could make a huge difference to your SEO and PPC strategy. To make sure you’re kept in the loop, we’ve got the lowdown on all the bits you need to know and what they could mean for your business.

Discovery Ads

Announced at Google Marketing Live back in May, Discovery Ads will be made available to advertisers later this year.

This new ad unit will change how ads are displayed when viewing the search engine’s homepage on mobile and they will appear in Google’s “Discover” feed, YouTube’s home feed and the Gmail promotions tab.

These discovery ads aim to target users when they are open to discovering new products and services even if they might not necessarily be what they were searching for. This makes the potential reach to new customers enormous and is definitely something you should consider using when marketing your business.

To make this process even easier, Google Ads will be adding recommendations so that advertisers can improve the optimisation score of their campaigns. To achieve the top score of 100%, you will be able to apply or dismiss recommendations which will all go towards getting the most out of your campaigns.

A Redesign Of Search

Google will also be rolling out a new look for text ads and organic listings with search. With text ads, we’ll be saying goodbye to the green as a black “Ad” label takes its place. This label will now appear at the top of the ad along with the display URL, also in black. This new look is designed to make users identify the source of the ad more quickly.

While the bold “Ad” label does stand out, there is a case for the green text making it more obvious that it’s an ad, but we shall see how this plays out.

The organic listings will also be getting a refresh with the introduction of the favicon. Anchoring the text in a listing will now be the website’s branded favicon next to the site name and breadcrumbs in black. You’ll need to add a favicon using this guide if you haven’t already. This update will provide users with a clear understanding of each listing, its source and what they can expect to see by clicking the link.

While these changes may seem small, these updates set the tone for Google’s future and the types of content we can expect to see in search results in the years to come.

“Full Coverage”

The “full coverage” feature by Google was announced last year. The feature appears under the Google News results where breaking stories covered by multiple publications are displayed, with the “full coverage” button taking you to all the relevant listings. This same function will soon be made available on the search results pages.

While Google rolls out these changes, advertisers and SEO experts should keep an eye on any impact this might have on mobile Google search traffic. For more insight on this topic get in touch with us!