Microsoft Joins in the Favicons Trial

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Reports on Search Engine Land this week suggest that Google isn’t the only one which is trialling the use of favicons in their PPC /acronym> ads.  Matt McGee this week posted the below screenshot showing Microsoft displaying favicons alongside their PPC /acronym> ads on Live search.  Apparently this is part of an internal trial and shouldn’t actually be seen outside of Microsoft IP addresses but a bug in the system has seen it shown to a lucky few in the outside world.

With both Google and Microsoft now prove to be trialling the use of imagery in their paid search listings it appears it should just be a matter of time before they become common place on the SERP.  Well, it should make for a more decorative and visually appealing search results page but, as mentioned in my Google post, I don’t envisage it affecting CTR in the long run as it will appear on all paid results once advertisers get the hang of it.  As a result, after the first few searches with the new results, users will become blind to the logos.  That is unless the great and the good of the search engine marketing world kind find ways of standing out from the crowd.