Last month, Google ditched its side panel search ads, marking another step towards offering a consistent search experience across all devices. Oliver Cassel, Head of Performance Operations at media agency Maxus look at whether it is time for us to stop distinguishing between desktop and mobile search.
In February, Google quietly rolled out a subtle yet significant change to its search engine. Now, ads no longer appear in the right panel of the results. Instead, the maximum number of ads in the top panel will be increased to four for highly commercialised queries, and ads will appear more often in the bottom panel. The right panel will be blank except for Knowledge Graph results and Product Listing ads.
This means more competition and higher costs for the top panel ads, now that the consolation prize of a poorer performing right panel slot is no longer offered. Extending the top panel to include up to four ads will also push the natural search results down further, reducing their click through rate and further boosting the value of top panel ads.
But this change also has a broader impact on search, where the trend is towards creating a unified, cross-device search for all screens and devices. As of last year, there are more searches on mobile than there are on desktop.
Mobile optimisation is no longer something that can be ignored, and removing the right panel shows yet another step by Google towards offering a consistent search experience across devices. Since there is not enough room on a mobile screen for a right panel, it makes sense to bring the layout of desktop results in line with mobile.
Google’s logo change, its development of Voice Search, and its penalisation of non-mobile friendly websites in search results have all moved Google closer towards this. Similarly Microsoft have integrated their competing search engine Bing into all devices, including desktop and mobile, that are running the latest version of Windows to deliver a uniform user experience. Search is becoming increasingly “device-agnostic,” and this is a welcome step forward from the days when mobile optimisation was a rare sight amongst websites.
Given this trend, is it time for us to stop distinguishing desktop and mobile search? Are we now approaching an era in which the device is irrelevant? This seems unlikely. While search is translating much more seamlessly across devices for end users, the fact remains that these devices serve different purposes for their users.
For example, mobile’s smaller screen size and its lack of a physical keyboard predisposes users towards quick queries, saving more important or complex actions like high value purchases for when they are at their computers. Similarly smaller wearable or Internet of Things devices will have their own uses, specific to what they have been made for.
We can therefore expect the device to continue to provide important context to search queries, with desktop and mobile search continuing to have their own distinguishing features. Much like mobile searches are more likely than desktop to show mobile apps in the results, there are certain opportunities for tailoring the experience that would be unwise to miss.
For advertisers and search marketers, understanding how different devices are used by consumers is as relevant as ever, and factoring this in to your AdWords campaigns is still important. The trend towards unified, cross-device services is certainly one to play close attention to, however, and each development certainly merits an examination of where it leaves us.
By Oliver Cassel
Head of Performance Operations
Maxus