New Google Shopping Results Actually Help Organic Serps CTR

[SnowMan68]

What I have been noticing lately is a shift in how the new Google Shopping Results have been showing up on the Google Serps. Since they have been testing this in the US results, everyone may not be seeing the same thing. In the past Google had placed their Google Shopping results inline with the organic results 100 percent of the time for many of the products I sell and search for online. This meant if you were #2 in the results, most of the time you were actually #5 because there would be about 3 links within the shopping results showing above you. Now that Google is testing their new paid inclusion version, I am actually seeing the Google Shopping results showing up in the top right hand corner more than 80% of the time for searches. Even when searching for highly competitive things it still wants to put them in the top right hand corner most of the time. This has actually moved up the organic results for anyone who was #2 or below. I believe it has also increased our CTR because of this. Here is a picture of what I have been seeing...

[postimage.org ]

At first I was only seeing the shift to the Paid Inclusion results on Google Chrome. Recently I have started to see it in Firefox and IE. I am making an educated guess, but I believe this is why our referrals from Google have increased significantly. Has anyone else noticed something similar?

[tedster]

I'm seeing some experiments with the Google Shopping results, too - some with one inline results like the old days and some in the Adwords area.

I also thought the recent dominance of the Products offerings was over the top. It must not have tested well for Google and this new round of experiments is quite welcome all around, I think.

[McMohan]

It must not have tested well for Google and this new round of experiments is quite welcome all around

Ted, After Google announced Google Shopping (Product Listing Ads) replacing old Product Search (Base), they have been experimenting with the layout. They removed the free shopping results for a while and kept only the PLA and sometimes both were showing. I don't know which way it is going, if they will remove the shopping results entirely from the SERPs or not, but as part of Universal results, I thought shopping results made sense for product queries.

[arikgub]

Don't worry, in the end the product ads will NOT be placed where they help organic CTR. That's the whole point of Google experimenting with different placements: to place them where users clicks on them and not on the organic.

[Bewenched]

With google shopping no longer free of course they are going to have the shopping advertisements prominently displayed.

[SnowMan68]

I think they were even more prominent when displayed inline with the organic serps. Now they are moved over to the top right when I do most searches. Google had already been displaying adwords with pictures over there prior to this change.

[tedster]

With google shopping no longer free of course they are going to have the shopping advertisements prominently displayed.

In the US at least, there are legal guidelines that make it mandatory to label paid ads in some clear way. Adwords (the top listings) have already been pushing on that envelope pretty intensely for a while. I don't think the Shopping Results can afford to take it any further.