I was up late watching tv when I saw a commercial for the Oreck air purifier and since I didn't want to sit there for a half hour to learn the price I went to Google to see what they are going for. I was surprised to see the amount of clicks the advertisers has mixed in with the PPC ads on the results page. Knowing this can't be a normal thing I took a screen shot of it. Click on the image to see it in full size. I am not sure Google wants to put out this info to everyone. I did a few more searches and it was on a few other searches but not many. It does help people doing ppc to see what their competition is actually doing.
UPDATE: 6/19/2011 4:25am – I just added a video screenshot to the bottom of this post. It is best viewed in full screen.
Nice spot vinny!
The other point is how annoying it’s going to be once they add it for big advertisers 1,300,000,000 clicks for that advertiser… but really great public data for your competitors to note down. The issue with any of this is that what is based on… is it local data, is it search data, is it ppc data, is it data from the beginning of time or just this month?
The problem with any deployment like this is that it’s another black box that you have to try and explain to a client or deal with as an advertiser because you started a new campaign and people aren’t clicking on your ads because it shows you only have ever had 10 clicks…
It’s another element that is going to potentially put advertisers in a box and make them weigh up the options of chasing a higher number again…. ie PageRank v3
They are going to show +1 results, click data, product ads, maps, click to play video, are they trying to build a full featured website in the AdWords columns?
Thanks David
Funny thing on this is that Firefox and Chrome showed different things for the same keyword. That is a new one for me.
Nicely spotted Vinny!
I’m curious about your comment as well. Did you happen to take screenshots the different results? If so, can you share that as well? If not, can you describe what you saw?
Is this for real? When the heck did this start happening and why WOULD they do that? It really doesnt make any sense to show that information.
I am seeing it on a few searches and can pretty much tell you its the same thing as the screen shot.
Thomas
I just added another screen shot for the term Handbags. In this screen shot you will see the amount of clicks in both the sponsored results on top as well as on the side. I highlighted the area in yellow.
Vinny,
I got no idea what they are doing it’s killing the clean look of the AdWords results and giving away data to your competitors….