I've seen talk of 3 sponsored results sitting atop Google search results in a few places over the last week, but now we appear to have confirmation and a little clarification on the issue from Google.

Google is pulling up an extra high-performing ad from its ad stack on the side of search results and moving it to the more promiment top-center placement. Google's argument is that, for commercial searches, such as "DVD player,'' ads are often as relevant to searchers as the regular search results.

"Google is always working on improving the user experience and ad effectiveness,'' spokesman Mike Mayzel told us. "For highly commercial queries, we believe an additional ad above the search results is good for both.''

So, 3 listings atop Search results on "highly commercial searches" eh? Lucky for that one Adwords advertiser that gets that spot, i presume it doesn't cost the advertiser anything more and works the same as the other two top listings.