In February 2016, Google made a change that got rid of the ads on the right side of the search results page on desktop computers. This change affects all searches around the world, in all languages.
First, let's talk about why Google made this change. The King of Search Engines never makes a decision without first doing a lot of research and testing. We can assume that this update won't have much of an effect on high-value advertisers and will help improve the user experience as a whole.
Google has put a lot of effort into making sure that their mobile and desktop platforms work well together. Last year, they said that their bidding algorithm for mobile search would start ranking websites, landing pages, and blogs based on how well they were made for mobile. This idea came from the fact that mobile searches on Google surpassed desktop searches for the first time in 2015.
Google recently got rid of the ads on the side rails, which is another way to improve the user experience by making the desktop SERPs and mobile SERPs almost exactly the same. Aesthetically, the desktop search page looks cleaner (though a little empty) without the extra ads on the side, and most users won't mind that they only see 7 ads instead of 11.
Finally! Google has launched a new format called side rails!
Google has launched a new format called side rails. It is very similar to anchor ads. Side rails are advertisements that appear on the sides of your pages when viewed on widescreen devices such as desktop computers.
If you already have anchor ads enabled, side rails will begin to appear on your site after December 13, 2022. Also, If you don’t want to see side rails, you may disable them in your Auto ads settings.
What do Side Rails Look Like?
Side Rails ads pretty much look and feel like anchor ads but appear on the side of the screen. They can play a great role to increase AdSense CTR.
Some may feel it is useless as we can use sticky sidebar and place ads there but it can be useful as you don’t have to worry about the extra space used on mobile devices as the sidebar ads appear on the bottom of the page on mobile.
You can see this image for reference:
What's the difference between anchor ads and side rails?
The platforms, or devices, are the main difference. Anchor ads show up on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices, but side rails only show up on widescreen devices like desktops.
Even if Google releases them on November 30, they won't start showing up until December 13.
Setup Side Rail Ads
How to set up Auto ads
- Sign in to your AdSense account.
- Click Ads.
- In the table of all your sites, click Edit Edit next to your site. Your site opens in the ad settings preview.Tip: You can use the preview to try out different ad settings before your Auto ads go live.
- Under “Ad settings”, turn on Auto ads.
- (Optional) Turn off Optimize your existing ad units? if you don’t want Google to optimize your existing ad units and your Auto ads together and place ads in the best performing ad placements.
- (Optional) Click Ad formats to turn off in-page and overlay ads, or to turn on Multiplex ads on your pages
- (Optional) Click Ad load and use the slider to control the number of ads you show on your pages.
- (Optional) In the “Page exclusions” section, click Manage to exclude specific pages from showing Auto ads. Note: Don’t add any page exclusions if you plan to run an experiment. Page exclusions are not available for experiments. You can add page exclusions after your experiment has completed.
- Click Apply to site.
- Choose your save option:
- Click Apply now and then Save, to immediately apply your Auto ads settings to your site.Or
- Click Run experiment first and then Run experiment, to test your Auto ads settings.
Final Words
We recommend you give the side rail ad a try as it can possibly increase CTR and CPC rates.
You can leave a comment below if you have any questions.