Google just rolled out a new design for search ads, and it’s a classic case of giving with one hand while taking with the other. The company is now grouping sponsored results into clearly labeled sections at the top and bottom of search pages, which sounds helpful until you realize what that actually means for your scrolling experience.
Here’s the setup: when you search for something, any text ads will now appear in a consolidated “Sponsored results” section right at the top of the page. Google promises the ads themselves aren’t getting bigger, and there will never be more than four ads grouped together. Once you scroll past that top section, you can click a button to hide all sponsored results for the rest of your search session.
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, there’s a catch — actually, several catches.
You Can’t Hide What You Haven’t Seen Yet
The new hide button only appears after you’ve scrolled past the sponsored section. So if ads show up at the top of your results, you have to scroll through them before the option to hide them even appears. It’s like Google saying “sure, you can skip the ads, but only after you’ve already seen them.”
And it gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective): Google will also place a “Sponsored results” section at the very bottom of the search page. That bottom section can only be hidden after you’ve scrolled all the way down and seen those ads too. So even if you hide the top ads, there’s another batch waiting for you at the end.
According to Google, “the new design helps people navigate the top of the page more easily.” That’s one way to spin it. Another interpretation might be that people have gotten so good at automatically skipping sponsored results that Google needed to make them more prominent.
Competing With Google’s Own AI Summaries
Here’s where it gets weird: the sponsored results section might appear either above or below Google’s AI-generated summaries. You know, those AI Overviews that Google has been pushing hard despite mixed user reception.
So now your typical Google search looks something like this: you type your query, scroll past sponsored results, scroll past an AI summary, and finally — maybe — get to actual search results from real websites. What’s another second or two of scrolling to reach actual information, right?
The timing is interesting. Users have increasingly learned to skip AI Overviews to get to traditional search results, and now ads are getting their own impossible-to-miss sections too. It’s almost like Google is making sure you can’t ignore either of them.
What This Means for Your Search Experience
The new approach is rolling out globally on both mobile and desktop platforms right now. If you haven’t seen it yet, you will soon.
On one level, grouping ads together and labeling them clearly is actually good for transparency. You know exactly what’s sponsored versus organic results. And the ability to hide ads after you’ve scrolled past them is technically a new feature, even if the implementation feels a bit like monkey’s paw wish fulfillment.
But the bigger picture is pretty clear: Google is making ads more visually prominent while AI Overviews push organic results further down the page. The search experience keeps getting longer — more scrolling required to reach the information you actually wanted.
For advertisers, this is probably good news. More prominent ad placement typically means better click-through rates, even if users have to work a bit harder to find what they’re looking for. Google’s entire business model runs on search ads, so making them more visible makes financial sense.
For users, it’s another small step in the evolution of Google Search from “information retrieval tool” to “revenue-generating interface with some search functionality attached.”
The Scrolling Tax Keeps Growing
Remember when Google Search was just a text box and ten blue links? Those days are long gone. Now you’ve got ads, AI summaries, featured snippets, “People Also Ask” boxes, and a dozen other elements competing for screen real estate before you reach actual search results.
Each individual change seems minor. Group ads together? Sure, that’s fine. Add an AI summary? Sounds helpful. Make ads hideable (but only after you’ve scrolled past them)? Better than nothing.
But add them all up and you get a search experience that requires significantly more work to use. The “scrolling tax” keeps increasing, and there’s no sign it’s going to reverse.
The most revealing detail in Google’s announcement might be the casual mention that sponsored results could appear above or below AI Overviews, like both features are now permanent fixtures that users will just have to navigate around. There’s no consideration of whether people actually want either feature — just assumptions about where to place them.
What You Can Actually Do
If you’re annoyed by this change, your options are pretty limited. You can:
Use the hide button once it appears (but only after scrolling past ads). This at least reduces how many ads you see in a single search session.
Install browser extensions that block or remove sponsored results. Ad blockers and search result cleaners can restore something closer to the old Google experience, though they require setup and maintenance.
Try alternative search engines. DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, and others offer cleaner interfaces without AI overviews or prominent ad sections, though results quality varies.
Just accept the new normal. Google has 90%+ market share in search. They can pretty much do whatever they want with the interface, and most people will keep using it anyway.
The hide button does represent a small concession to user preferences. It’s not much, and it comes with strings attached, but it’s something. Whether that’s enough depends on how much the new ad prominence bothers you.
The Future of Search Looks… Crowded
This redesign is part of a larger pattern. Google keeps adding features that generate revenue or serve Google’s priorities while making it incrementally harder to find what you’re actually looking for. Ads get more prominent. AI summaries take up more space. Organic results get pushed further down.
Each change individually might seem minor, but the cumulative effect is a search experience that feels increasingly designed for Google’s benefit rather than yours. The company still provides useful search results — they’re just buried under more layers than ever before.
As this new ad design rolls out globally, expect the reaction to be mostly resigned shrugging. People will adapt, just like they’ve adapted to every previous change that made Search more cluttered and commercial. The alternative would be switching search engines entirely, and for most people, that feels like more work than just scrolling a bit more.
Google knows this. That’s why they can keep making these changes. The monopoly position means they can gradually degrade the user experience in favor of revenue optimization, and most people will stick around anyway.
So welcome to the new Google Search, where ads are more visible, AI summaries take up space, and organic results live somewhere down there if you scroll long enough. At least you can hide the ads now — you know, after you’ve already seen them.