Google is making search ads more and less avoidable

Google is tweaking how sponsored results will appear in Search. Going forward, it will group any text ads on the Search page into a “Sponsored results” section that will appear at the top of the screen. The size of the ads is unchanged and Google says there will never be more than four ads in a grouping. Once you scroll past the section with ads, you can click a button to hide all sponsored results. 

According to Google, “the new design helps people navigate the top of the page more easily.” Maybe that’s because people have gotten used to automatically looking farther down the search results to skip the AI Overviews. Google’s announcement even noted that the sponsored tab might appear either above or below its AI-generated summary. What’s another second of scrolling to actually reach information? But lest you scroll too far, Google will also have a “Sponsored results” section at the very bottom of the page that can only be hidden after you’ve seen those hits. 

The new approach is currently rolling out globally on mobile and desktop platforms.