Retiring Bing Sidebar Ads – Cleaning Up The SERP

Updated January 7, 2023

Keeping Up With the Goggles

This week Microsoft’s pay per click advertising platform has announced that they’re going to be removing ads from the sidebar. Bing Ads are very much AdWord’s poor relation when it comes to new features and innovations, but it seems they have now decided to remove their sidebar ads and make a design change to the SERP. So, why no more Bing sidebar ads?

Cleaning Up The SERP

Back in 2016 Google removed their sidebar advertising and links in an effort to make the mobile and desktop SERP experiences more similar. By removing the advertising from the sidebar the user is given a more streamlined search experience as they are in mobile. This decision was also made, presumably, because the ads in the sidebar were not getting as many clicks as those placed in ‘stream’.

Well, hot on the heels of that decision from Google, Bing have decided to follow suit and remove sidebar advertising from their own search engine results page. They’ve tested and found that removing text ads from the sidebar increase overall clicks, so they’re gone forever. Note that product ads (Bing’s version of Google Shopping) will still occasionally display on the sidebar.

Bing Ads Extras

When the sidebar ads have been removed users will also see an extra ad below the search results. So there will be a reduction of overall advertising space on the SERP, but as Bing’s AB testing seems to show that clicks have improved, you shouldn’t notice any major differences in your account’s performance.

Goodbye Bing Sidebar Ads

What do you think about the sidebar changes? Did you notice any difference in your AdWords account when the changes were first implemented? Do you think a cleaner SERP leads to happier users?