One of our affiliates was checking out the Google results last week and was surprised to see that Google was obviously in the process of testing out some new versions of the results page.

Here’s a screen grab, you can click it for a bigger view:

As you can see there are a number of things going on this Google results page, including:

• AdWords ads showing up with a bright yellow background on the top and the right
• A video results section is showing up under the AdSense ads on the right sidebar
• A news results section is showing up under the video results on the right sidebar
• A big “searches related to” section running at the bottom of the page

The affiliate also reported that he saw other iterations of these results showing up, including one where the video results section was running on top of the AdWords sidebar on the right side of the page.

Very interesting stuff. But why would Google do this?

I’m thinking that Google might be trying to figure out a way to add non-paid videos to the right sidebar to gather data about how people interact with them, so they can figure out the best way to add revenue generating video AdWords units to the search results page eventually.

I do find it interesting that this testing is happening for the term “auto insurance” - something that I would think would have less than average video watching appeal to searchers, and something that’s best ranking video is a guy making a funny phone call to an insurance company. I have an easier time imagining both paid and unpaid videos doing very well for consumer products terms, especially for terms like “TV reviews,” “compare digital cameras,” “compare SUVs,” etc. I know that when I’m looking at electronics or cars I watch a lot of video reviews and comparisons online.

Anyway, keep an eye out for other test that are going on…if you see anything, send me a screenshot and I’ll add it to this post.

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