By Alan Coleman on 26 Sep 2014
As you know, Google is constantly changing how it presents SERPs in an effort to improve user experience; Ad extensions have been added, rich snippets are now included and the knowledge graph integrated.
Google's Visual Web Rollback
Very recently, Google made the unpopular decision to retire a number of the visual elements from the search results. Google Author profile pics were sundowned, Youtube rich snippets retired, and one of our favorite and most effective betas, image ad extensions, didn't make the cut.
Image Ad Extensions Retired
If you've been following our digital marketing musings, you will know that we have been championing Google's embracing of the visual web. This sudden visual web rollback led to a lot of consternation and debate in the Wolfgang office. Google as a "Mobile First" Company.
One of the reasons cited by Google for retiring theses visual features is that they don’t work so well on mobile: "We've been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results, in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices." Okay, so we can deduce that Google sees itself as "a mobile first" company and is allowing mobile considerations to dictate SERPs on all devices. Here's another pertinent Google quote from a blogpost on new mobile ad format which was posted on Sept 10th:
"People expect information right at their fingertips, whether it’s locating the nearest burger joint or booking a flight. And they’re searching for all this information on small screens -- sometimes as narrow as 4 inches. This means that mobile ads must make every character count."
So this is evidence indicates that Google feels somewhat shackled by smaller screened mobile phones and is changing the mobile SERPs to accommodate.
New Hardware in the hands of Google users
The timing of Google's mobile ad format blogpost was unfortunate to say the least. Only the day before, September 9th, Apple unveiled the iPhone 6, which has a 4.7 inch and a new 5.5 inch model. Not only did Apple launch a bigger screen, but they announced the pixels on the 4.7 inch model have increased by 38%, making it more rich snippet friendly. 
The result of the Apple Sept 9th announcement is that Google's "small screen SERP strategy" is looking distinctly out of date before it has gotten out of the blocks. #occupationalhazard
Now that Apple has changed up the hardware on which their mobile users are using Google, Google can look again at how it displays the most useful, relevant and authoritative results to its users with less constraining factors. As both a Google searcher and advertiser, I certainly hope this move towards bigger screens means we see the visual web back in the SERPs where it belongs.
- Alan Coleman
