Google recently made a change to its search results page which seems to make ads look more like organic search results. This is not the first time Google has made a change like this, although it does seem like this latest one is the most impacting.
Google Search is the search engine many people use to find the information they want. As a result, it is also one of the best places for businesses to put an ad. While ads being shown when Google returns search results is nothing new, the company has always made sure ads and results were separated to some degree. However, the level of separation between paid and organic results has been declining over the years, and the latest change now makes it even harder to identify one from the other.
Last week, Google announced it was adding favicons to search results. This is the same type of icon you might see when you have multiple tabs open to let you know what website each tab is for. At the time, Google said it was making this change to increase transparency and to make it easier for consumers to “better understand where the information is coming from.” However, and in spite of being a small change visually, the effects are far more visually significant – to the point where it makes it harder to tell if a result is an actual result or one paid to be there. The ads do come with “Ad” labels, but those labels are very much in keeping with the style and shape of favicons in general. To most people, they will just look like favicons. That means if someone is not paying attention to the favicon there's an increased likelihood they will click on the link thinking it's one of the higher (and therefore, more relevant) results.
The short and simple answer is that Google is first and foremost an advertising company. Whether it is viewing ads on a webpage or companies paying to have their ads shown on Google Search, Google takes a cut. With most people using Google Search as their first port of call for information, the revenue Google makes from advertising is staggering. For example, in the third quarter of 2019, Google posted $33 billion in ad revenue alone.
Therefore, Google finding new ways to blur the line between an ad and a natural result is something that will directly benefit Google's bottom line. Not to mention, it’s not the first time Google has done this. Over the years, it has slowly removed the features (that Google added in the first place) to help consumers stay informed about the difference. This has included removing boxes that clearly separate ads from natural results and removing colored backgrounds that further helped ads to stand out and apart from the rest of the results. As the other measures have been slowly eroded, this latest one appears to top the change off nicely - with only the small “Ad” icon proving the difference. Whether or not this latest change forces more people to consider switching search engines (or even web browsers) remains to be seen. While other, and especially privacy-focused ones, have gained in popularity recently, Google is Google, and whatever it does to promote ads is unlikely to make much difference to most people.
Source: Google
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