serpapi
[Google Search API] Decreased frequency of ads returned in search results
Several customers have reached out over the past few weeks, reporting that they no longer see ads returned in Google Search results. Proving this has been tricky due to the nature of ads returned in search results.
The current advice is to set the most specific location possible. However, most of the customers who reported this may have already been setting a location parameter and were still seeing a reduction in searches that returned ads (from 20-25% to 5-10%). According to multiple customers, this started roughly 3-4 months ago.
While there may not be anything we can do to force Google to serve ads, I believe it's clear that there has been a steep decline in the number of search results returned.
I ran a test of 1000 searches in batches of 100 searches for the query web hosting services. Of the 1000 searches, only 71 returned ads (7.10%).
While it may be anecdotal, of the searches I reviewed that returned ads, all were performed using the same proxy provider:
- https://serpapi.com/searches/681b9f9965f701af8d634fa1/inspect
- https://serpapi.com/searches/681b9f993d8701d7d112ebee/inspect
- https://serpapi.com/searches/681b9f993d365622ba1d98b5/inspect
- https://serpapi.com/searches/681b9f99304eba66ea13b445/inspect
- https://serpapi.com/searches/681b9f99b6a867c94dc7dc4d/inspect
I'm looking for that feature to be fixed too. It is a key for my project. Thanks
But i need the ads to be present for the google_maps engine. thank you!
@sebastian-serfe It sounds like you may be looking for #2394, as this issue is specific to the Google Search API.
We're only seeing ads served in <1% of results, so even if we could get back up to 10% that would be great
@jonsinclair1 thank you for your report. We apologize for the current decrease in numbers. Thank you very much for your patience.
Just in case this is helpful in debugging, I sometimes see "sponsored" text on the HTML standalone.
@ocvit @andypple83 @tanys123 @Krugloff Hey guys, can someone please take a look at this issue? Thank you!
Thanks, @aciddjus!
Feel free to reach out to me directly for additional context. I'd be happy to sync to discuss further.
Is there an estimated ETA for this issue to be fixed? I've a completed a project based on this, waiting the results to has sponsored results. Otherwise I'll have to work on another feature. Having this working will be great for the aim of the project which is filter by sponsored results. Thanks!
Hi @sebastian-serfe, unfortunately, I’m not able to provide an ETA at this time. We’re still actively investigating and working to better understand what, if anything, may be contributing to the decrease in ad results.
We’ll be sure to share an update in this thread as soon as we have more information.
@Krugloff and I ran a script to test Ad results. I think @Krugloff will update the benchmarks soon.
FYI: For some keywords, Google returns Google AI Overview and Shopping Results instead of Ads.
https://www.theverge.com/news/671514/google-ai-mode-overviews-ads-expansion?utm_source=tldrnewsletter
