Ask HN: Is Google showing you ads in the middle of the search results?

2 pointsspaceman_20201 comment

I just saw an ad in the middle of the search results page. This was very deceptively marked with only ad “Ad” favicon and no other advertising markers. Even had the triple dot options icon but that was not clickable.

See screenshot: https://ibb.co/W32vxnQ

Anyone else seeing this? Feels very deceptive to me

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Likely part of an A/B testing where they test click rates. Everything on Google's result pages is tested, font size, wording, spacing because an improvement by 0.01% is already millions of extra profit. I used to work at the competition and we did the same, often multiple tests every day.

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