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Google Sponsored Links Changes Color - Official

Haochi [PersonRank 10]

Friday, April 6, 2007
17 years ago3,797 views

http://googlified.com/files/yello-google-adwords.gif
"First, we thought it was time for a new look: after months of testing, we decided to switch the background color of the top ads from blue to yellow. Second, we've modified what counts as a click in this box to be consistent with what counts as a click for the ads on the right hand side. Instead of clicking anywhere in the box, users now need to click on the link in the top line of an ad in order to be taken to an advertiser's site. Together, these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad, while making our highest quality ads more visible."
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/04/two-changes-to-how-top-ads-are.html

Distracting! Evil!

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Hardly evil! Perhaps distracting to some people. Its better that you have to click the link.

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

It's much more structured than before. I used to think that the top ads were worth the same as the side ones, but they obviously aren't...

It's definately better than the red colour they were testing a couple of months ago.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

>> I used to think that the top ads were worth
>> the same as the side ones...

I still think they are. If you ever see ads at the top of the page, reload the page a few times and you'll usually see them move to the side. When we've bought AdWords before, our links have sometimes moved to the top of the page at no extra cost to us.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I don't think the change is bad, and certainly not evil... if anything, not making advertisers pay for accidental clicks – now you need to click the underlined title of the ads – is more good. I'm still getting the blue color here on Google.com, by the way, so the roll-out's not finished yet.

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I only think if it was under the heading "Top Result – CLICK HERE NOW:"

Andrew [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I bet this is just a test. If revenue goes down they will test another color. Trust me, Google is not doing this for a new look, they are testing too see which works best.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I think they've already tested and this is final (I wonder what were the alternatives).

Search-Engines-Web.com [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

[Moved from "Google Changes Sponsor Links' Background Color to Pale YELLOW from Pale Blue" – Tony]

http://www.freezepage.com/1176257958EAIMEDALTX

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

On my monitor, this new yellow background is very, very pale. So much so that I almost took a screenshot and posted it here saying that they'd removed the background color. (And I *almost* clicked an ad today thinking it was a search result because of this change!)

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Even without a background, top ads look different than search results.

For example, they don't have
- Xk – Cached – Similar pages
at the bottom.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

What Tony describes may be a larger pattern, because we can be 99% certain that Google wouldn't have changed the background color if it didn't improve click-throughs.

I wonder if the yellow "fades out" easier (compared to the old blue) on certain popular screen settings? And I don't think we can find out simply by measuring color distances... there may be other factors at play here.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<< Even without a background, top ads look different than search results. >>

Indeed. And like I said, I *almost* clicked an ad thinking it was a search result but then realised the format was different and it was therefore obviously an ad.

Given that most people very quickly scan SERP results, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that some people wouldn't notice this difference, thus increasing click-through rates.

Zollman [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Wow the Yellow looks great. I first saw this color format on RedZee.com They also have it so that the user has to click on the direct link to open the website. This makes sense in improving the quality of click -throughs to the advertisers sites.

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