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A couple weeks ago, Google changed the name of sponsored links to ads as the search ads label. I personally did not think it would have an immediate or long term impact on the click through rates on the ads.
But the Search Agents blog published a study showing click through rate is up since the change. Honestly, I am very skeptical of the data and it seems they are also.
They looked at over 80 million impressions and 1.5 million clicks between October 28 – November 10. Maybe that is the issue? This feature didn't really go live until November 5th I believe.
Either way - Search Agent promised to keep looking at the data to see if it had an impact. Not that it is all that easy to isolate the "ads" label as a variable from other Google tests or features that go live every now and then.
Here are their current findings based on what I posted above:
- Average position increased 1.5%
- Total impressions decreased 1.5%
- Total clicks increased 9.7%
- Average Click-Through Rate (CTR) increased 11.4%
- Average cost per click (CPC) dropped 2.3%
- Total cost increased 7.1%
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
