Google's recent decision to remove the ads from the right-hand side of the search results' pages has raised a few eyebrows among the search community. Google maintains that its main consideration is to improve the user experience and relevance of the results page and, at first glance, it would seem that this change is one that actually isn't driven by increasing profits. How could they possibly benefit from shrinking the advertising space from 11 potential clicks to six? Well, firstly, Google isn't doing away with all the ads on the right hand side. The official announcement said: "Ads that have previously shown to the side of the results may in some cases appear below them." We can assume that Google will judge the impact on paid traffic for each keyword, much in the same way that it has assessed the need for a Top three ad box in the first place. If total paid search click-throughs fall drastically for high-volume terms, you can bet your daily budget that the side...

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Halloween is just around the corner and Google has unleashed another scary Quality Score update. Or has it? This month, Google announced an update to its ads quality algorithm that increases the weight given to landing page relevance and quality in determining quality score and paid search rankings. This move is preceded by testing in Brazil, Spain, Portugal and Latin America. Then and Now: Before this change, landing page quality was included in quality score but was only viewed as a negative factor. This meant that if you were running poor quality landing pages you might expect to see a low quality score (QS) or that you could see your landing pages rejected altogether. Either way, having a fantastically relevant, unique and authentic landing page would have had no positive impact on QS. Now, landing page quality will have a more positive impact on QS weighting it more strongly versus the usual factors of Click Through Rate and Keyword Relevancy. What Does It...

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Last week, Google started serving up a new (massive) version of organic site links. Site links are the extra links that you can see beneath search listings in Google SERPs and they're there to provide shortcuts that help people quickly find the information that they're looking for. Site links in one form or another are now commonplace in both paid and natural search results. So far, these 'jumbo' site links are only appearing against branded searches, where Google is pretty certain that the searcher is looking for that site. Whether you're a brand owner, interested in protecting high converting brand traffic, or a reseller that relies on traffic from your product brand terms, it's important to take notice of this change, which has the potential to significantly impact your traffic from natural and paid search. Are they relevant or are they the ones that you want? The first thing to check is whether you're lucky enough to have the new site links enabled. If you are...

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We've had three weeks or so now to get used to Google's latest foray into the world of travel - Google Hotel Finder and it feels like a good time to reflect on what it could mean for the hotel industry. What is it? Google Places started out as Google Local in September 2004, which was then combined with Google Maps when that went live five months later. Listings started out as three local business listings and a map for queries that included a location, expanding to ten (the “10 pack”) in January 2008 (finally becoming the “7 pack” in October 2009). The renamed “Places” went live in June 2009, with individual Place Pages for Google Maps rolling out in the following September. This update also expanded the Places listings to include not only businesses but transport networks, landmarks and importantly, hotels. The expanded interface for registered users meant opportunities for optimising their listing with categories (i.e. keywords) and service...

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Larry Page's timing is impeccable. In his first full quarter since becoming chief executive, the Google co-founder has just announced a 36% year-on-year increase in profits to just over £1.5bn. Unsurprisingly Google shares soared on the news. Page has taken a bit of stick since he took over in April, mainly because of plans to increase costs by hiring more smart people (what an idiot?!) and focusing on product innovation (doh?!), so one has to assume he enjoyed proving them wrong - and what do they know anyway... I'll let you pick through the results for yourselves but here are a couple of things the mainstream press seem to have got excited about: • Mobile devices are going to be big and it seems people like using search engines on mobile devices • The price of paid advertising is going up most probably because it's becoming more and more valuable as people spend more time researching and shopping online (and more and more competitors want a piece of the...

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