Google is updating its search appearance with two new features: Highlighting writers (journalists) Google+ profiles in Google News and Ads (from AdWords) will now appear at the bottom of the search results page in addition to the top and side ads.

Highlighting Writers In Google News

Google has announced that writers/journalists will receive more exposure in Google News by showing their Google+ profiles near the search result. In fact, this is an expansion of the improved author appearance Google introduced few days ago to Google News and the authorship process will be the same.

The link to the journalist’s Google+ profile will be shown next to search results posts of which he/she wrote, with his/hers photo, how many Circles is he/she in and an option to add him/her to the user’s Circles (when logged in). Here’s a screenshot of how its suppose to look:

Google continues to promote Google+ aggressively in all of the company’s products, including its core product- The search engine. The implementation will take place in the next few weeks and it will begin in the Google News English editions at first.

Ads At The Bottom Of Search Page

Google presented new placement of ads on the search page- At the bottom. Google stated in the announcing blog post that it will improve the “user’s flow as they scan the page from top to bottom” and even added that according to their tests, bottom ads perform better than side ads.

To compare performances by themselves, advertisers could use the Top VS. Side segment (that would be renamed to Top vs. Other) in AdWords. Here’s a screenshot of ad at the bottom of the search results page:

The new ads placement will allow more advertisers to appear on the first search results page and i don’t see this move as unethical- It won’t interfere with the user experience and other search engines (like Bing and Yahoo) already have ads at the bottom of the page as well.