A few months ago I read where Google was testing adding images to Google AdWords.
Well, today I saw it in action for the first time.
Notice the two images of riding mowers at the top of the right hand column. In my opinion, at least in the case of someone looking for a riding mower, the images don’t help much and maybe even hurt my search.
The images are just too specific, I’m early in the process of looking for a riding mower I’m not looking for a specific model. Here they are showing me two models. One cost $650 and the other one is $2,184, not very helpful but rather more like two wild and crazy guesses as to what I’m interested in.
Since it’s a pay-per-click or even a pay-per-performance model it may not hurt these two advertisers but it hurts everyone else in that column who got pushed down the page. As a consumer I don’t like it either as it just wasn’t relevant to me. I need to learn a little more about riding mowers before a specific product and price are meaningful to me.
Now, if later in the process as I learn more, I may be looking for a John Deere riding mower with a 60″ deck, specific images and pricing may prove to be very helpful for that search, just not now.
Thankfully, this is just a test.