G'day. I am not sure if this is a new thing or something I have completely missed somehow. On a search today, I saw a result a few times which had nothing to do with the topic I was searching for. It turned out the result was an ad which looked like a normal 3rd position search result: Any ideas on this? It is quite a sneaky ad anyway you look at it.
Well it looks like this has nothing to do with the search query. What you think have Google placed it misconceptually or it has a strong back link structure for pyrography course?
The link has nothing to do with Pyrography. I did a search for GTD a few days ago so it seems to be a focused ad. To look like a normal search result is as already mentioned, quite a sneaky thing to do.
Google has been doing this for a long time with Adwords, and it's really a problem. Google can easily manipulate rankings by promoting ads in its interest. No need to prioritize its own websites in the SERPs.