In early August, Google moved the ads closer to the free listings. We had some initial SEO/SEM back observations that this resulted in higher click through rates on the ads.
In Google's 3rd Q 2009 earnings release conference call, Jonathan Rosenberg confirmed these findings. The transcript read:
Imran Khan - JP MorganHow much of your sequential growth was driven by Ad Auality improvement?
Jonathan Rosenberg
Again, we don't tend to break that out. We had a very good quarter from Ad Quality's perspective. I can tell you the significant things that we did. The biggest things, probably in order, or close to order, were the UI tweaks that we did for results pages. We changed the maximum width, decreasing the spacing between the search results and the right hand side ads on wide screen. With that it increased the click-through rate on the right hand side ads and I think we did that some time around the second week in August.
We also had some significant ad improvements like site links that basically allow additional links to categorize and deeper advertisers of a site, which you can see if you run a query on something like Chevy, you'll see the Silverado, the Malibu, you will see more information there, which increased click-through rates.
We also did some more work on showing more goods at good ads and expanded match. But we don't give a specific sense of exactly the percentage that that resulted in. The more significant of the changes occurred in mid-August.
There is confirmation that CTR has improved on the ad size with that move.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
