Yellow Sponsored Listings in Google?
I recently read over at the PPC Blog about Google testing different colors for the background color of the sponsored listings.
Some people had speculated that this was only happening in the UK, but I just had the ads show for me in a very light yellow (more specifically, the color was #fff9dd). Here are some screenshots:
I was using Firefox and switched over to IE if this was an IP specific action or based on a cookie in my browser or if it was related to being logged in to my Google account. Being logged in or out in Firefox gave me the same yellow box. In IE I got the same old blue background that looks like this:
Personally, I had a harder time seeing the yellow vs. the blue and think that Google might be trying to blur the line between paid and organic search results.
UPDATE: Google has announced that they have "decided to switch the background color of the top ads from blue to yellow", so it looks like the test is over and the yellow is here to stay.
Comments
Got it for the first time (yellow - and only across the top sponsored listings, not down the right hand side) today in Canada on Google... so to attract the eye, or not - and what about the recent study chatted up on threadwatch about Banner Blindness - I think its appropriate to this - or has the opposite been proven, in this case that the yellow colour generates more bucks (like 10 billion last year wasn't enough...jeez) via click throughs - do you think Google might enlighten us?
Posted by: f-lops-y | April 5, 2007 03:02 PM