It’s been a couple of years now since Google started labeling it’s search-based ads as “sponsored results.” That hasn’t stopped many users from being upset about how many sponsored listings they see when searching for anything on Google. Now, though, it looks like Google has finally listened to some of the backlash and is giving users the ability to hide sponsored posts. There’s just one problem: you can’t do it until after you’ve already seen the sponsored results.
Google currently labels any paid advertising results as sponsored, often placing them at the top of search pages as singular entries. An upcoming change will soon make it so that all of the sponsored posts for a search are grouped together with a “Sponsored results” label that remains in view as you scroll, according to a post on Google’s Ads & Commerce Blog. The arrival of this box might not sound all that significant, but it does come with one distinct advantage: you can now collapse this section, hiding it from view for the rest of that particular search.
Not quite the change many were hoping for
While Google says the change is meant to “make navigation even easier,” it’s worth noting that you’ll still have to scroll past all of the sponsored results before you can click on the new Hide sponsored results button that now resides beneath them. That said, with Google adding more features to Search on a regular basis, as well as expanding what AI Mode can do, it’s unlikely that the company will jeopardize its advertising business in any way by giving users a way to hide sponsored results in advance.
So, like many things in life, we’ll have to settle for what we’ve been given. And while it might not be the change that many users hoped for, it is still a nice little quality of life improvement that we’ll be taking advantage of whenever using Google Search. in the meantime, at least Google has also given us the ability to use its groundbreaking Nano Banana image generator in Google Search.
