Google recent­ly made a big change to AdWords: right side ads have dis­ap­peared (save for PLAs and the Knowl­edge Graph), and there’s now an addi­tion­al fourth spot above desk­top search results for “high­ly com­mer­cial” search­es. For those of us in the health care and med­ical indus­tries, and for mar­keters in gen­er­al, this is excit­ing news.

Many com­men­ta­tors have inter­pret­ed the removal of Google’s right rail ads as a death sen­tence. The response from top indus­try play­ers has essen­tial­ly boiled down to a few key pre­dic­tions:

• CPCs will go up.
• Bid­ding wars for ad space will esca­late.
• Organ­ic traf­fic will be crushed below the fold.
• Search mar­keters are doomed to all sorts of gen­er­al fire and brim­stone for­ev­er.

It’s fine to make pre­dic­tions – any kind of con­ver­sa­tion on major indus­try news is healthy. But the assess­ments being made since the news broke has been so off base and defeatist. Of course there will be losers with every par­a­digm shift, but if you’re a seri­ous dig­i­tal mar­keter, you (or your clients) won’t be one of them. So, to clear the air, what fol­lows is a more clear-eyed per­spec­tive on what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing with Google’s desk­top search lay­out update. The truth is that we have plen­ty to cheer about – if you’re already estab­lished in the space, this could actu­al­ly be an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to get ahead. Here are five good rea­sons why mar­keters should cel­e­brate the end of Google’s right side ads.

1. Better UI for Users

A bet­ter user expe­ri­ence is always a boon to astute search mar­keters in the long run. The right rail ad space was clut­tered and dis­tract­ing. I pre­dict that the “eye path” of most users will now be square­ly focused on the major paid ad posi­tions – which is exact­ly what we want. If you’re con­sis­tent­ly in the first or sec­ond spot (which is where we put in the work to be), this puts an even larg­er cus­tomer spot­light on your page.

2. Eliminates Junky Bidders

Get­ting rid of the right rail gets rid of the noise – you know, those guys who had been camp­ing out in the 4–10 spot posi­tion on the right and bot­tom of the page, bid­ding on key­words like “facelift” or “lipo” to sell exot­ic creams and/or Spanx. They won’t be able to take atten­tion away from the tru­ly rel­e­vant results any­more because the cheap real estate on the right side of the page no longer exists. They’ll either have to make a suc­cess­ful push for the top spots, or fall off the face of the page entire­ly. Giv­en the sta­tis­tics, it’s unlike­ly that the for­mer pos­si­bil­i­ty is ever going to hap­pen. Ads on both the side and bot­tom of the page amount to a mere 14.6 per­cent of total clicks, accord­ing to an arti­cle by Lar­ry Kim on Search Engine Land. This heatmap illus­trates where users’ tend­ed to click on Google search results pages – clear­ly right rail ads weren’t a hot spot: With such poor per­for­mance, it’s like­ly that these links were only cre­at­ed to siphon away clicks for more rel­e­vant results. The dis­ap­pear­ance of these ads from Google lets the users find what they want, and only what they want. No one is going to miss your com­pa­ny because they decid­ed, “hmm… maybe I’ll just buy some Spanx instead.”

3. 3–4 Spot Segmentation Is A Huge Opportunity

There’s now a new­ly viable 3–4 spot “posi­tion-com­bi­na­tion” for “non-core terms.” Pre­vi­ous­ly, the fourth posi­tion was utter­ly point­less – most of our clients with strong bud­gets end up in the 1–2 spots any­way to max­i­mize results, and those with lim­it­ed bud­gets (say, less than 60 per­cent impres­sion share), usu­al­ly wind up in the legit­i­mate 2–3 spots. But with the improved desk­top UI, the fourth posi­tion is now much more notice­able – which, in turn, makes the third spot all the more com­pelling. With no ad-clut­ter on the right side, all four top ads look like seri­ous­ly legit­i­mate options for the user. We’re not sug­gest­ing you start bid­ding for fringe key­words, but for some low­er-pri­or­i­ty ad groups using non-core terms, the 3–4 posi­tion will like­ly become an eco­nom­i­cal place to dri­ve traf­fic, where­as before the 2–3 space would have been too cost-pro­hib­i­tive. A 2015 eye-track­ing study illus­trates my point per­fect­ly: With­out the dis­trac­tion and clut­ter of the right rail, user atten­tion is dri­ven down the page more effec­tive­ly, mak­ing these 3–4 posi­tions much more impact­ful than before. For well-seg­ment­ed cam­paigns run by pro­fes­sion­al dig­i­tal mar­keters, there will be plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty.

4. Remember, Medical Isn’t Retail (Or Lending)

The real car­nage will come for those small retail­ers who could only legit­i­mate­ly com­pete at the 4, 5, 6, and 7 posi­tions. Sor­ry, guys. Why could they exist in that space in the first place? Because some peo­ple will shop around end­less­ly to get $7 off a $700 TV, click­ing to find ship­ping for $4.99 ver­sus $8.99. They’re going to get the crust of the ad space sand­wich because they won’t be able to com­pete with the Ama­zons, Tar­gets, Best Buys, and oth­er larg­er “e‑tailers” for top ad spots. For­tu­nate­ly, med­ical and cos­met­ic fields just don’t have the kind of depth that retail does. There are hun­dreds of mort­gage providers and thou­sands of TV sell­ers who can all pro­vide a great prod­uct, and they have to com­pete in search place­ment bid­ding wars to sur­vive with­in their own indus­tries. In med­ical PPC, you won’t find a depth of com­pa­nies look­ing to “step up” and cre­ate a bid­ding war. If that hap­pens, there will be ways to com­bat it. But I don’t pre­dict a price-poca­lypse, and the ini­tial data sup­ports that notion.

5. Organic Traffic Suffers IF You Aren’t Ranked At Least #2

On desk­top, if your results are gen­er­al­ly in the third posi­tion or worse, your organ­ic list­ings will be dumped below the fold – and if Google dis­plays a map, even first and sec­ond list­ings will get the boot. But while this push down­wards may affect your imme­di­ate vis­i­bil­i­ty, there will still be large num­bers of users who trust organ­ic list­ings over ads. As long as you’re on the first page of results, traf­fic will come – those users who don’t click on PPC ads will sim­ply scroll. Let’s be real: the world wide web is 20+ years old — peo­ple online know how to scroll.

Conclusion

Here’s what know:

• Get­ting rid of the “right rail” cre­ates a more nat­ur­al expe­ri­ence of ad results for users.
• Many of the ads camp­ing out on the side and bot­tom of search results aren’t rel­e­vant, and they account for less than 15 per­cent of total clicks.
• The third and fourth spots offer greater vis­i­bil­i­ty than right rail and bot­tom ads have for a price that’s just as afford­able.
• Peak vis­i­bil­i­ty isn’t impor­tant for med­ical mar­keters like it is for those in retail – ads in the third and fourth places are much more viable in these cas­es than they are for deep­er mar­kets with more rec­og­niz­able com­peti­tors.
• Cus­tomers who are real­ly going to con­vert will scroll down – even if your organ­ic traf­fic is hurt, the most valu­able cus­tomers are going to see your web­site.

The nice thing about these points is that they’re testable. Every week, we’re col­lect­ing good data, and there will be even more in the com­ing months. When we see the results, we’ll be able to react appro­pri­ate­ly, respond­ing to trends as they unfold. So far, we see a 0 per­cent week-over-week impact.