Googles recently made a small tweak to their search results page by shifting sponsored links on the right hand side closer to the organic (free) results. Theres no official word from Google on the change which has experts speculating it may be a sneaky way to increase AdWords revenue.

Search Engine Roundtable has created a great video to illustrate the changes Google has made:

As you can see in the first example, AdWords listings on the right hand side dont expand with the browser like they used to. It looks like Google has set a fixed spacing width between organic and sponsored links which remains constant as the browser expands.

This will be especially noticeable for widescreen users as AdWords listings will now sit much closer to the organic results.

As I mentioned earlier, many experts are speculating this might be an attempt from Google to increase the click-thru rate for ads on the right hand side. More ad clicks results in greater revenue for Google " so it wouldnt surprise me if this was the case.

What do you think, have you noticed the change?

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