Have you noticed the changes in Google Search Engine Result Pages?

When I searched for "web designing companies" in Google last day, the search result appeared with slight changes. I noticed that the Search ads that is usually appearing on the right side of the search result was not there. Google has removed ads from the right side of its search results. After searching on Google I come to know that Google will no longer show ads to the right of its search results, instead it will show four ads at the top with two exceptions. Also Google will show PLAs (Product Listing Ads) and ads in the knowledge graph on the right hand side.

Google’s official statement was like this, “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.”

Lets take a look at these changes on the search result. Here is a screen shot of the Google search result, appeared last week for the keyword "London hotel".

You can see ads showing on the right side. When you search for the same keyword now, you get the result like this.

This roll out of Google affects paid search ads (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO) and businesses. It effect users worldwide in all languages and will bring the desktop experience closer to the mobile experience. Without any doubt PPC gears up from this update. And that's Google is looking for. It will definitely increase traffic to 4 ads sites at the top of a search results page. This demonstrates Google’s preference for paid search over SEO. They constantly are creating challenges for SEO professionals while making more features and customizations for paid search. Lets wait and see how it affects SEO.