Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the appearance of Adwords links appearing in Google Image Search Engine Results pages. For example, we entered the key phase ‘Audi R8′ into the Google image search and we were presented with adverts for Audi dealerships as well as the image results (see image above).
Personally I thought this was unusual. When I use the Google image search I’m often just looking for a particular photograph or image that I can use for design work. When I entered the term for Audi R8 I wanted a nice image of the car that I could manipulate, and I have no intention of buying one in the near future! So are these adverts completely wasted on me? Is this the case for everyone that’s searching Google images?
The sponsored links that appear are in the four line advert format, and there are three adverts in total that are side by side at the top of the page, just above the organic search results. Google has apparently been testing this for a number of months now, and it seems that more and people are now seeing the results. There may be a special criteria that needs to be fulfilled before your advert appears in the image results, and I’m interested in finding out more about it. If it’s not advantageous for your advert to be displayed in Google images, it could effect your PPC quality score if your advert makes a lot of page impressions but has few clicks.
