Wow, I was writing a post about something completely different when I went to check something on Google and saw this. To me it looks like Google Universal (the link above the results that says, “Video Results >>”) but my friend (who happens to be an SEO Consultant in Orange County) pointed me to an article from SE Land about video ads coming to Google search results and how no REAL ADS have been spotted yet so I’ll let you be the judge…
March 7th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
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March 7th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I forgot to add that when I asked my friend to confirm what I was seeing, he couldn’t see it. That wouldn’t be anything unusual if we were on different datacenters but we weren’t (the IP address was 209.85.165.104 for both of us). This means either two things: 1) Matt Cutts wasn’t lying when he said that even though you’re seeing that you’re on a particular datacenter, you could be getting search results from an entirely different datacenter or, 2) there’s something else going on with Google Universal that unfortunately I can’t explain at the moment.
March 9th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
wow!. I will have to start looking for this. What impact will it have on SEO?
March 9th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Other than more SEOs targeting Google Universal placement, I’m guessing not a whole lot. Universal itself changed the landscape (no pun intended) of SEO in that it presented a new form of competition and opportunity at the same time. IMO, this just fuels the fire.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I think what Google is testing is placement and volume of the graphical ads. If the sponsor section on the right is full of visual ads, it may work against Google as we have all seen users adapt to banners and ads, a.k.a. banner blindness. Part of the magic that is AdWords is that the sponsored links are very close to the organic ads.
Personally, based on the image you’ve taken here, I think Google is going about their testing in the wrong manner. The text link ads work because the SERPs are text right? So why isn’t Google testing the new visual ads along side their new Universal results? If they have been, I sure haven’t come across any examples.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
My first thought was that this is an attempt to fill up all that white space on the right when you’re viewing over 10 results/page and get down past the tenth result. However, ultimately I’d agree that this is really just another test to see what else they can do to increase click-throughs for the ads on the right. I have to say though, as much as it drew my attention to the right when I saw this, I doubt Google implements it across the board (it’s just too dangerous).