Vulture marketing companies often like to call up and construe a Google update in such a way that it may panic a lawyer who potentially isn’t in the know. Quite frankly I’d like to kick a few of these people in the knees, but instead you get my energy in a video blog giving you the quick run down – Yes!

Google is cleaning up it’s search engine results page (SERP) this year by removing ads down the right side of the screen for “desktop” users. This will change the way we set placements since what was before the 3rd place paid ad – the last one between Paid results and Map Pack or Organic results – will likely become the 4th paid ad.

Why are they doing this? Learn more in 2 minutes 30 seconds by watching our video.

Video transcript below:

Hey you guys, it’s Landon with Obu Interactive.

I’m coming to talk to you today about a new development that’s just been confirmed with Google, and one of the reasons I want to tell you about it is I want to make sure that if someone comes to tell you about the new update from Google, and what they have done with their paid search results, and how things have changed, that you’re not getting sold any hocus pocus because quite honestly, the result, while significant, isn’t going to affect your business too much.

Now here’s what’s happened. Google has now confirmed, after a few years of testing and plenty of chatter on the web, that they will be removing the ads that are down the right side of the page.

In paid search, what you see in Google search results are typically three ads on the top of the organic search results, there’s ads that run down the right and there’s a few ads at the bottom of the results. It’s the ones down the right that are typically not very well maintained, usually don’t relate to your search very well and quite honestly nobody probably clicks those; Google is getting rid of those.

Now, why do we like this? Because it’s going to clean up Google’s search results page. It’s gonna make it a lot cleaner, easier to use, it won’t be filled with ads. And that’s good for Google. They want to look relevant, they want to look timely, and they want to have the best results. That’s what makes them number one. And the people who actually advertise well are typically in the top three to the top four.

Now, there is going to be one exception and this is important for you to understand, as an attorney, is that the high commercial industries may get a fourth ad.

Now, when pressed, Google responded that these types of industries may be things like hotels, New York City type searches, or car insurance.

Now the reason why we at Obu think that maybe this will be important to law, is because legal searches are some of the most expensive in the world. Having a good paid search campaign is not an easy thing to do. So, they may make a fourth ad for highly competitive terms, or when certain types of litigations may heat up, so you might see this definitely in mass tort advertising.

Anyway this is something just to keep in mind in terms of your paid search strategy. Don’t let anybody call you up and tell you some hocus pocus about what Google’s done, there is some update and you need to get on board. Everything is going to be cool.

If you have any questions or comments, we would love to have the comments below. You can contact me directly at 619-807-9654 or email at landon@obuinteractive.com.

Thank you for watching, have a good one.”