More and more, Google’s search outcomes web page isn’t just the on-ramp to direct you to probably the most related info on the online; it’s additionally the vacation spot. The unpaid hyperlinks are buried amid a hodgepodge of reality packing containers, information hyperlinks, advertisements and snippets of textual content.

For entrepreneurs who rely on Google to deliver them net site visitors, the blurred traces between advertisements and common outcomes make it onerous to decipher whether or not the purchasers being redirected to their websites are individuals who had been going to return to them anyway or those that stumbled upon them due to the advert.

“You may’t determine the place the highest-value clients are coming from if everybody is available in by means of that paid advert,” mentioned Amanda Goetz, vp of promoting on the Knot Worldwide, a marriage planning group. “Proper now, it’s only a bidding battle, and types now have to purchase in opposition to their very own title as a protection mechanism.”

Ms. Goetz referred to as the redesign a “transition to this nearly misleading darkish sample.”

Josh Zeitz, one other Google spokesman for the advertisements group, mentioned the design adjustments had been in step with tips from the Federal Commerce Fee. In 2013, the F.T.C. made suggestions for the way search engines like google ought to label advertisements, however stopped wanting particular necessities apart from that paid outcomes needs to be “noticeable and comprehensible to shoppers.”

Google’s latest adjustments adhered to a few of the tips however ignored others. Google didn’t observe what the F.T.C. prescribed for “visible cues” with paid outcomes marked by “distinguished shading that has a transparent define,” by a “border that distinctly units off promoting” from unpaid search outcomes or by each. However the brand new advert icon met the F.T.C.’s suggestion for advert labels to seem earlier than the paid end result on the higher left-hand aspect.

Google declined to remark on the file about the way it interprets the F.T.C. tips, citing a quiet interval earlier than the earnings report. An F.T.C. spokesman, Mitchell Katz, declined to remark on Google’s adjustments.

Google just isn’t alone in making an attempt to squeeze extra income from distinguished web properties. Fb, Instagram, Twitter and Amazon are growing the numbers of advertisements that seem on their websites and apps and labeling ads in several methods.