Google Serps definitely tested not having inline ads at different stages, I don't remember if is was ever solely sidebar ads, I think it was keyword dependent g

Google Serps definitely tested not having inline ads at different stages, I don't remember if is was ever solely sidebar ads, I think it was keyword dependent going back pretty far. I've got three wayback machine links below and the nostradomous one eschewed inline ads in 2002 so I think the experience was somewhat dependent on what keywords you were searching. But going back to 2000 (when scraping DMOZ was still how everyone seeded quality), you can see that "inline ads" above organic results were a relatively early thing. https://web.archive.org/web/20021002224152/http://www.google.com/search?q=nostradamus https://web.archive.org/web/20021002224152/http://www.google... https://web.archive.org/web/20001205201000/http://www.google.com/search?q=real+estate https://web.archive.org/web/20001205201000/http://www.google... https://web.archive.org/web/20021105030346/http://www.google.com/search?q=Harry+Potter https://web.archive.org/web/20021105030346/http://www.google... Looked through old posts from the google dance days on webmasterworld, I couldn't see any discussion of ads repositioned from the sidebar to inline, so yeah, I think inline placement was around a long time, certainly by the time this google blog post was first published.