Google Search now lets you hide sponsored results
Anyone who has used Google Search will have at some point been frustrated by the appearance of “sponsored results” which are rarely of help. Google has apparently come to the sudden realization that tainting search results in this way is irritating, and is providing a way to quickly hide them.
The problem with “sponsored results” is that they are, essentially, advertisements. While much of Google’s money comes from advertising, inserting paid-for entries in search results has long felt disingenuous and misleading for users. Here is how things are changing.
Despite the slightly euphemistic name given to “sponsored results”, in a blog post about the changes it is introducing, Google is refreshingly honest about the fact that they are in fact ads. The company proudly proclaims: “We’re improving navigation and introducing a new control for ads on Google Search”.
In the post, Omkar Muralidharan – Vice President of Product Management and Data Science at Google Ads – says:
Every day, billions of people turn to Google Search for information, and our goal is to help them find it seamlessly. To make navigation even easier, we’re updating how we show ads on Search.
Text ads on the search results page will now be grouped with a single “Sponsored results” label. This new, larger label stays visible as people scroll, making it clear which results are sponsored — upholding our industry-leading standards for ad label prominence. We’re also adding a new “Hide sponsored results” control that allows you to collapse text ads with a single click if you want to focus only on organic results. In our testing, we found that the new design helps people navigate the top of the page more easily. The new design keeps the size of ads the same and you’ll still never see more than four text ads in a grouping.
The new “Sponsored” label also applies to other ad units on the search results page, like Shopping ads. These updates are currently rolling out globally on desktop and mobile.
Before you start performing cartwheels and somersaults of joy, there are – of course – a few things you need to keep in mind.
Google says:
- The “Sponsored Results” label for text ads will stay at the top of the screen as you scroll. You’ll be able to click “Hide sponsored results” to collapse text ads and focus on organic results only.
- You can also find the “Sponsored results” header above or below AI Overviews.
- You’ll also see the “Sponsored results” header for text ads at the bottom of the page, with the same “Hide sponsored results” button.
- The new "Sponsored" label will appear in other places, including Shopping ads, where it will be labelled as “Sponsored products”.
What you will notice is that while sponsored results themselves can be hidden from view, the heading for them will remain visible. On top of this – and somewhat frustratingly – Google has not provided a way to make the hiding of sponsored results stick as the default way of seeing things. What this means is that the next search you conduct will display sponsored results until you opt to manually hide them again.
Still... it’s something.