Google News Officially Adds Advertisements

Although many people have been noticing ads on Google News for the past few months, Google News has rolled out ads on Google News search results to all US based searchers.

Google began testing ads on Google News back in mid-November of last year. Google confirmed those tests in their blog post, where they said:

In recent months we’ve been experimenting with a variety of different formats, like overlay ads on embedded videos from partners like the AP. We’ve always said that we’d unveil these changes when we could offer a good experience for our users, publishers and advertisers alike, and we’ll continue to look at ways to deliver ads that are relevant for users and good for publishers, too.

So a search for obama or iphone will now return ads on the right hand side. This is not always a good thing. Ten days ago, I showed at the Search Engine Roundtable how advertisers can try to use the ad section to try to spread fake and devastating news, to searchers who don’t know any better. Clearly, Google needs to be more careful with the ads displayed on Google News and Finance, then what they show in the standard search results.

Here is a picture of an ad spotted in Google News for a specific search phrase:

Further discussion on Google News adding ads at Techmeme.