For years Google has sometimes, for very obscure and restrictive queries, has potentially shown more AdWords ads than organic results in the search results page. This has come up from time to time and we honestly stopped covering virtually all the cases.
But Danny Sullivan from Google has said he will share this feedback with the team. In short, someone was upset that when he searched for [site:www.papworthhospital.nhs.uk ransomware] more ads than organic results came up.
You wonder why I don’t use Google? The ads get a bit overwhelming. I did a search. To help you, the second picture (same search) marks the ads. pic.twitter.com/9qjMQ7bIGM
— Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur) November 28, 2017
Here is the screen shot he shared:
When I search for it, I get two ads and two organic results:
That being said, when Google has no organic results to show and the ads are available, they run into these issues.
Danny said he'd share the feedback with the team:
Yes, don't doubt that! Just not an ordinary situation. Virtually no one will do search that gets only two organic results, so that ads might overwhelm the page. It's not representative. But I've passed the feedback on. Perhaps we might consider limiting in cases like this.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 29, 2017
Again, I have only seen this come up for really long tail keyword searches or site command with queries after them.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
