Google Related AdWords Ads – A Possible New Road in PPC

by Josh McNair

Let's face it; Google is a constantly changing and evolving company, always looking for the best way to display information to their customer, the searcher. But a company is exactly what they are, and they are and will always be in the business of making money. This is relevant yet again in a new beta they are testing for their PPC customers entitled Related AdWords ads.

Originally reported by Search Engine Roundtable this new beta for Google has the potential to really mix up the search community. Related ads essentially shows ads that Google deems to be relevant to the term that the searcher used. Take the below screen shot, the customer searched for Barratt's Shoes, but was also given related ads to Clark's shoes, a direct competitor, not simply misspellings of the original word.

This has the potential to directly impact rankings, just like the Mayday update and redesign did to organic rankings less then two months ago. A direct search for your companies name used to be a sacred place where you could easily control both the organic and PPC ranking but with related ads it has the potential to now become an easy way for your competitor to steal your customer away when they are searching directly for your company name. This is especially frustrating if the competitor is not already targeting your company's name, and Google starts to do the work for them by creating these related ads.

Now this also works in the adverse as you have the potential to take traffic from your competitor's searches by becoming a related company on that search. Google has not announced their considerations for what they deem related yet, but we can cross our fingers that they will shed some light on it if this feature does get adapted into their algorithm.

Another potential pitfall to this strategy is the increase in impressions / clicks that these related searches could start to generate. Think of it this way, say you are Clarks company and you have no Barratt shoes, you can be pretty sure that the click has a high percentage chance of a bounce; however, this click will still cost you money. Thus Google is essentially taking money from companies that use AdWords by displaying their results on searches that they might not have optimized landing pages for, and less of a chance to make a sale.

Now this feature is still in Beta, so Google will inevitably make tweaks and changes before it goes live. But with all of the big changes Google has made in the last couple months we can be sure that the search landscape is changing, and we the SEO and SEM must be ready to meet it head on.

What do you think? Will this change make a big difference in the market? Weigh in with your comments below.

About the Author

Josh McNair is active in the SEO and PPC community through regular guest posts on industry blogs and well as a full time author on the eCommerce Blog and Entrepreneurship blog. He works for online home improvement retailer PlumberSurplus.com which sells everything from bathroom faucets to bathtubs.