Google AdSense related search experiments re-enabled

Google has announced that it has re-enabled the AdSense related search experiments. Google said as of January 6, 2022 AdSense publishers can once again create Related search Custom search style experiments in your AdSense account.

Paused for 8-months. Google actually originally announced the company was just pausing the related search experiments for a couple of months. Well, that lingered on for a total of eight-months and now over eight-months later, Google has unpaused this feature.

The original pause announcement, which was changed slightly, now reads:

We would like to inform you about a few changes that impact your ability to create Custom search style experiments, specifically for your Related search styles in your AdSense account.

Beginning May 10, 2021, you will not be able to create new experiments for your Related search styles in your AdSense account. Your existing Related search experiments that are currently in progress will also stop on May 10, 2021. Please note that this change does not prevent you from creating experiments for other elements of your styles (e.g., search ads, shopping ads).

Our engineering teams are working hard to bring this functionality back.

Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Where to access. You should be able to see this option under the “optimization” section and within the “experiments” tab in the AdSense console.

Why we care. If you missed using the related search experiments feature for your AdSense ads on your site, you can now re-enable it. It might be worth testing the feature if you have not done so for a while.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.