Have you noticed anything new with the way Google is displaying its paid search ads on its SERPs lately? According to the Periscopix blog, Google may be testing a new layout of its SERPs with the paid search which is used to be located at the far right end of the SERPs now closer to the organic search results. The new SERP layout appeared while James Carswell was using Firefox 3 as he later found out that it is not showing in IE8. I checked it out using Firefox and Safari with both of the browser windows maximized and noticed that indeed the paid search results are closer now to the organic search results. If you have been using Bing lately, this new Google SERP layout is similar with Bing’s SERPs.
Here’s a screenshot of the old Google SERP as captured by James:
While this is a screenshot of the Google SERP in both Safari and Firefox:
If indeed Google is rolling out this new SERPs layout, they might raising some issues here specifically in misleading users that the links on the right are actually not sponsored links and are part of the organic search results aside from the probability of users accidentally clicking them.
