Google AdWords Trial Ties Ad Position to User Behavior

Google has confirmed that they are testing a change in the way ads are ranked. Continuing a theme that was heavily stressed at SES San Jose, according to Google spokesman Michael Mayzel, Google is “exploring changes to the way we promote ads to the top of the search page. This is designed to further ensure that users will find ads only when they’re most useful and advertisers will receive the most qualified leads. With this improvement, users may see more prominent ads if they are currently showing interest in ads and less prominent ads otherwise.”

The way it works is that if a user shows a history of ignoring certain ads, then those ads will be moved from the top of the page to the right side for that user. You can test this by typing in a search and then refreshing the page 3 to 5 times. You should see the ads that were at the top get rotated to the side.

Yes, this could serve to push up prices in heavily competitive sectors. However, Google hasn’t indicated if it will continue this practice, so we’ll just have to watch and see for now.

Here’s the ClickZ article