Google have been in the headlines a lot lately due to the amount of testing that’s been going on… We’ve seen various versions of the homepage; some with buttons; some without buttons; some saying ‘Press Enter to Search’; and some saying nothing at all until the user moves their mouse over the page, triggering the fancy fade-in effect, revealing the rest of the page.

And now comes more evidence that Google are willing to test new features. This time in Adwords - Features that affect the way certain Sponsored Links are displayed to the user.

So far we’ve seen Site Links in the Sponsored Links (only for certain brand keywords – for obvious relevancy reasons).

And now, we’ve even seen Maps appearing in Sponsored Links – from what we’ve seen, we can only assume that Google grabs the location for the map from the businesses location given for that particular Adwords account (optional) when people are setting up their account for the first time.

It’ll be interesting to see if Google decide to keep these changes, or if they are merely test. One thing which might scare you if you do a lot of SEO, is the shear size of the Sponsored Links when these new elements are present, and the effect it may have on natural results by forcing users to scroll down further to see them.

Tell us what you think…