It looks like Google is expanding the size of the Product Listing Ads on the right sidebar of the search results. There are now some PLAs displayed with three rows of products, up from the usual two.
When Google shows Product Listing Ads (aka Shopping Ads) in the search results, we either see one row of results above the AdWords and organic, either as a static box or as a new sidescroll carousel of PLAs. And if they appear on the right sidebar, they usually appear in two rows. But now, Google is testing showing three rows on that sidebar.
Here is how it looks in the search results:
And some more examples of just the PLA section in the sidebar:
As you can see, it covers a wide variety of product types, so it isn’t restricted to one particular market area.
I could only find examples with 9 products, not 10, 11 or 12. Is this just the start of a test so it is limited to the maximum 9 that shows in the PLA carousel? Did they enable the third row but forget to increase the actual number of products that could appear? Hard to tell.
I saw no evidence of Google changing away from the single row style of products above their search results. This is only the PLAs that appear in the right side bar that show 3 rows of products instead of the usual two.
Jennifer Slegg
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