New Feature In Google Search Could Give Publishers More Ad Headaches

Google Featured Snippets now can link to the exact content from a query to serve up from a search. It’s only available on content from mobile sites using Accelerated Mobile Pages, an open source initiative to promote faster load times. When the Featured Snippet links to an AP article, Google will scroll the user down to the answer in the orange highlighted section. It could bring up an interesting dilemma for advertising. It could mean a higher percentage of advertisements on publisher sites get overlooked because Google will scroll the person searching for the content right past the ad and to the content. A snack bar at the bottom of the window also tells users they are “Scrolled to the section” and provides a “Go to top” shortcut. The highlight and snack bar automatically disappears after a few seconds, according to one report.