Google has removed ads from the right side of its desktop search results, and has placed them on the top and bottom of search pages.
Instead, the right side will be used for Google’s Product Listing Ads, an AdWords-created placement for companies that show an accompanying picture along with relevant product information. The company will also be allowing a maximum of four AdWords ads on the top of the search page, according to The SEM Post.
Google (GOOG) confirmed the change to Coins2Day, adding:
We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.
The change aligns the desktop experience with that of the mobile search site. According to The SEM Post, the change will be global and affects all languages.
This follows several recent tweaks to the way Google has approached ads, a key revenue driver that grew 17% to $19.08 billion in the most recent fiscal year. The company announced earlier this month that it was banning Adobe Flash-made ads by 2017, and has tried to address the rise of ad-blocking software by announcing it had blocked 780 million “bad ads” in 2015.