I'm starting to see these instead of the usual yellow ones:

http://airplane12.googlepages.com/Picture15.png

EViL
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Why? It looks great
Thank you Jake

It's even less noticeable than the yellow!
EViL
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If they give me the information I need, I don't care about the colors.

<< It's even less noticeable than the yellow! >>

I can agree with that, but i disagree it's evil .

What about ordering ads by relevancy, like ordinary results? That could be an interesting option.

It's not already the case? I think Google display the most pertinent ads at top, even if they are less expensive than others.

<< What about ordering ads by relevancy, like ordinary results? >>

That's actually one of the reasons behind the success of Google ads. Since the major revision of their ad network in around 2002, their ads have a "quality score", so relevancy can be judged by the page's content, as well as the ads content.

Are you sure that relevancy==quality score?

<< This score is determined by your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page. >>

I just wanted to rank the ads based on the relevancy of the landing page. Not the CTR or the ad text or something else.

James Xuan: There's a trade-off between how much you want to emphasize that those ads are ads, not results, and how intrusive you want your ads to be. While the choice of gray makes the sponsored links look more like normal results, it's also less intrusive to the user than yellow.

In any case, whether or not intrusiveness outweighs disclosure, I don't think it's "evil" and certainly not making an extra post just to make another face.