Less than five months after piloting a program that put large banner advertisements on the top of some search result pages, Google's pulled the plug. The controversial practice added large photos across the top of the page, along with a selection of links directing users to the paying companies website. All this appeared farther above organic search results than typical advertising on the results page, something that garnered criticism. Google's head of search Amit Singhal announced the end of the program during a presentation at the Search Marketing Expo in San Jose yesterday, though did not go into detail on the change of heart, reports Marketing Land. If you never saw them during the run, that's because the test was limited to a little more than two dozen companies, and was US-only.
Google’s killed off an experiment that put giant banner ads atop search results
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