Google recently rolled out a new design for search results on mobile, for both paid and organic listings. It’s been testing this new design for several months, and has now been brought to the UK. So, what’s changed?

1. Green ad labels have been replaced by black

Google reps believe this change will make it easier for users to see whether the information they’re seeing is an ad or not:

“When you search for a product or service, and we have a useful ad to show, you'll see a bolded ad label at the top of the card alongside the web address, so you can quickly identify where the information is coming from.”

For me, this change is a real biggie. Does it in fact make the ads subtler, and harder for users to distinguish between paid and organic?

This could be great news for paid search teams when it comes to increased click-through rates, but it might be at a compromise of your organic listings. This is particularly important when it comes to branded searches – if you’re bidding on branded terms and your organic listing is already ranking in first position, you might be paying for that link when you don’t need to. Equally though, it could increase the need for paid. You don’t want this to go to a competitor that’s bidding on your branded terms.

We know Google wants to serve the user with the best content for their query, which raises another point: if your paid landing pages aren’t tailored to that search term, users are likely to bounce off the page soon after – leading to high CTRs but low return on ad spend (ROAS). We’ll be monitoring this closely with our Total Social view – that paid and organic should work together.

1. Organic listings now include favicons

Organic listings are now able to pull in a favicon on mobile., which does help differentiate the paid and organic listings if you know what to look for. It also helps with brand awareness, potentially making users more likely to click on your article because of recognising the brand. Google says:

“With this new design, a website’s branding can be front and centre, helping you better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what you’re looking for.”

But it’s not guaranteed your favicon will be included – even if you’ve set it up correctly – but it’ll certainly help.

1. Site name and breadcrumbs now match text ads

Yet another change that makes it harder for users to distinguish between paid and organic listings: the breadcrumb is now listed in the same position as the ads, and the site name sits below it.
So, with all these design changes, it’s essential we monitor the effect of them, and optimise accordingly.

How to measure the impact  

Measure clicks and CTRs from keywords
To truly understand the impact ads are having since the changes, you need to go granular. Look at each individual keyword to see how clicks and CTRs have changed for paid and organic. To get this data, you can use Google Search Console (but keep in mind there’s a three-day lag on this) and AdWords for the paid data.

By looking at it on an individual keyword level, you can spot future opportunities too. For example, if paid clicks have shot up for a branded keyword for which you’re ranking first, you might want to do a test making sure this keyword isn’t being bidded on.

You can also spot seasonality better – as an example, if you see sun cream related keywords increase in clicks for both paid and organic, this may not be due to Google’s changes, but simply because of the lead up to summer. Year-on-year analysis will help you also spot any trends here and let you know whether or not it’s something to worry about.

The main takeaway you should get from this? Work closely with your paid and organic teams. Users don’t always spot the differences between the two, so making sure you monitor this from both an organic and paid point of view is crucial. Make your channels work together, and you can provide your client with the best results.

Want to learn more about our Total Search approach, please email us on results@icrossing.co.uk