The new text is displayed at the top of the yellow AdWords box on search engine results pages, with the user’s search term displayed in bold. Dream Systems Media first noted the rollout in a blog post.
For instance, below, you see “Ads related to shoes”:
The objective, according to a Google spokesperson, is to empower users with more information: “As part of our ongoing efforts to show ads that are relevant and informative, we are including more information about why users are seeing certain search ads.”
Besides, Google claims that this latest effort at transparency is also meant to spur click-through rates–and has likely done so in extensive testing. Perhaps users are more likely to click when they understand better why they are getting the ads they are getting.
Furthermore, Google already provides information on why particular ads appear if users click on “Why These Ads?” at the top right of the yellow ad block, but this text provides very limited information at a glance.
Moving ahead, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google has pulled out arrows previously used to scroll through AdSense ads, which were introduced in 2008.
Just last week, Google unleashed some refinements to AdSense reporting, including the ability to view all-time reports, access reports from the My Ads tab and download CSVs in the correct local formatting.