Why Google has backtracked on its new search results

SAN FRANCISCO — A couple of weeks ago, when Dan Shure was searching on Google for information about butchering meats, he did something he had avoided for 20 years: He unknowingly clicked on an ad.

Shure, a consultant who helps companies manage where they appear in Google searches, had always thought it was easy to distinguish between paid search results and unpaid links.

That changed Jan. 13 when Google revamped the look of its search results page for desktop computers. Even for someone with a trained eye like Shure, it was hard to see the difference between an ad and a regular link.

“I felt dumb because I had never clicked on an ad before,” said Shure, 40, owner of Evolving SEO, a consulting firm in Worcester, Mass.

In the two decades since Google introduced text ads above search results, the company has steadily made ads less conspicuous. But its latest look may have pushed things too far. Users complained that Google was trying to trick people into clicking on more paid results, while marketing executives said it was yet another step in blurring the line between ads and unpaid search results, forcing them to spend more money with the internet company.

The dust-up comes at a bad time for Google, which is facing accusations around the world that it unfairly takes advantage of its search engine dominance. And it is an indication of just how careful the internet giant now must be when it makes subtle — and sometimes unsubtle — tweaks to wring more money out of its giant ad business.

Regulators and politicians are investigating Google’s influence over the digital advertising industry. And some advertisers are openly challenging search ads as a “shakedown” and “ransom” by the tech giant, which controls about 90 percent of web searches.

Ginny Marvin, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a website that covers the search industry, said there is more awareness among users of Google’s behavior because of recent privacy complaints and government antitrust probes.

“There is much more scrutiny by your regular user who may not have thought anything about this a year or two ago,” Marvin said. “To see them make this change in the face of antitrust regulation” was not going to go unnoticed.

Earlier this month, Google said it will eventually strip third-party trackers, or cookies, from its Chrome browser, a decision it described as an effort to build “a more private web.” But the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers quickly complained in an open letter that removing cookies could “choke off the economic oxygen from advertising that startups and emerging companies need to survive.”

The reaction to the recent search page changes was so negative that Google took the rare step of reversing some of the design changes last week. In a statement, Google said it was “experimenting with a change” to the new logos next to the unpaid links, although it did not alter the new ad logo.

Lara Levin, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement that the recent design changes mirrored a new look the company introduced for search results on mobile phones in May 2019. The company tested the new look on desktop search, and the results were positive, she said, but it decided to make some changes to respond to “feedback from users.”