Christmas Divider

Google's decorating the SERPs!

[Atomic]

Do some Christmas related searches and check out the right side of the SERPs. Where you'd normally find a vertical line you can now see all sorts of Xmas icons. I don't know if it's been mentioned before but this is the first time I've heard of it or seen it. I'm not sure if this is a SERP or an ad change but I only saw it on Christmas related searches and the icons are closest to the ads. The eye is drawn to them immediately.

Suggested searches include Christmas tree, Santa claus etc.

[greatstart]

Looks nice! If we did that on our pages to draw more attention to the ads, it would be in violation of the TOS.

[Atomic]

I don't know about that. A row of verticle icons should be ok if they're far enough away from the ads and they aren't pointing at them or lined up perfectly with them. I just saw it as something drawing my eye to that side of the page.

[The Contractor]

See this thread [webmasterworld.com] also.

[jomaxx]

They founded the company and they can do as they see fit, but I highly doubt it would be a violation anyway. There's no conflation between the images and the ads themselves, which is Google's main concern.

Anyway it took me a while to figure out what you're seeing. In my brief testing it was only visible on google.com, and even then only from US IP addresses.