I recently noticed that I almost
clicked on the ad version of a link, instead of the organic search version of
the same link, and I then came across an article
about Google’s latest UX design change.
As per the latest design change, Google
ads and organic search results are completely identical except for the small “Ad”
logo on the top left for an ad. This will make it all the more challenging for
businesses to measure attribution to Google ads, and measure incrementality.
Just because ads are placed on the top, and are now almost identical to organic
search, people will tend to unintentionally use the ad links a lot more to
reach the same site they would’ve otherwise used the organic search link for.
The user doesn’t gain or lose anything, but businesses come at the mercy of
Google, with Google increasingly demanding a higher price, showing evidence of
clicks. This will harm small businesses even more, who will spend thousands of
dollars when they didn’t really need to. Businesses may feel conned and look to
other search engines, but with Google’s monopoly, do they really have a choice?
Businesses are so small and fragmented when compared to the size of Google,
that they cannot fight this battle. It’ll be interesting to see if the regulatory
authorities consider this an anti-trust issue and ask Google to distinguish more
between ads and organic search results. Can regulatory authorities have rules
and regulations around UX too? That said, we as consumers tend to slowly accept
and adapt to any change around us. Before you know it, we may start
circumventing this and avoiding the ad link as a habit. It does though shift
the responsibility on consumers though.
No comments:
Post a Comment