Google sidebar advertising dropped

[Purplesars11]

Has anyone noticed how the google sidebar advertising has completely disappeared? They only display top 4 adwords and then remaining on the bottom of each search page. I can't find any info on it or when it actually happened?

[Purplesars11]

haha! That's uncanny timing!!! Yes Chris. You heard it here first Thanks for the update.

[Rushmark]

Sarah, I hope you're going to take credit for spotting this first

it's official ...

https://moz.com/blog/four-ads-on-top-the-wait-is-over

[Purplesars11]

I seen your video Yosepgr... Interesting comments and I also have similar thoughts re the adwords. For me, it's happening on different browsers AND even when signed out. I very rarely see the side rail ads atm.

[Joseph-Green-SEO]

I see the same thing, in one account they will show ads on the right side, on the other one they will not.

[Purplesars11]

Haha! It's actually driving me crazy (the curiosity). It just looks on all my browsers like desktop side rail ads are banished. Such a puzzle. Ah well... Google does what google wants at the end of the day.

I did read the article Kristen shared and some other interesting older articles discussing similar queries. It's funny too that with the 4 ads along the top, the top organic searches above the fold are getting less and less exposure.

[Rushmark]

Don't you just love Google!   I've just been messing about with it and you're right.

Same search term logged into one account and no sidebar, logout and it's back.  Then sign back in with a different G account and it's still there.

Then do the same routine using a VPN from a different location and the sidebar is consistently there.

Glad it's not my job to make sense of all this

[Purplesars11]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Chris I've tried it on different browsers (both signed in and signed out) and with different keywords. I'm finding it does it with some keywords but not others... Interesting. I was wondering if they were considering phasing out sidebar ads perhaps altogther...

Kristen I will read that article now thank you. I agree with you about the freeing up of the right hand space in regards to the Knowledge Graph results. If I'm searching for something in particular, like a company or person, I see more and more that the knowledge graph results appears nicely on the right. I'm going to look into this further.

[Rushmark]

Worth pointing out that if you log out of G then the sidebar reappears.

[Rushmark]

I've seen this a few times, but mostly when I've been doing multiple quick searches around the same or similar keyword combinations (i.e. working on a client's campaign).  I'd put it down to either testing or Adwords restricting the display where it looks like it's not a "genuine" search pattern.

Does not look like it's widespread or permanent.  But who knows!