According to a report from Search Engine Land, Microsoft’s Bing is following in the footsteps of Google and is removing sidebar text ads from search results. The change takes effect today, and will not apply to syndication partners like AOL and Yahoo.
The Bing team apparently found that the removal leads to an increase in ads clicks in the mainline text, saying it has “an immaterial impressions impact.” The removal also means that users may see an extra ad space at the bottom of search results, with up to four text ads.
Shopping ads are not impacted by the change, and will still show up in the sidebar for more results. Microsoft will begin testing the change in other markets soon, so, for now, this appears to be the US only. Do you notice too many ads on Bing? Does this change seem welcome to you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
