Last week we posted about Google testing the colour of their sponsored links, this has now been confirmed as more than a test, rather a full on change.
In his post on the Rimm-Kaufman Group blog, Matthew Mierzejewski reported getting in touch with Google and receiving confirmation of the change. They said:
Starting today and ramping up to 100% globally by the end of this week, we’ll be changing the background color for ads that appear above the search results on Google.com as well as our local domains. The ads, which currently have a pale yellow background, will change to have a pale purple background. This change is part of the ‘look and feel’ update to our color palette and logo that we made back in May of this year to keep the Google results page looking fresh and modern. This is purely an aesthetic change to our ads and won’t have any impact on the way we target or serve advertisements on Google.com.
Like Matthew, I am unsure of the effect this will have on CTR although I am sure that Google have tested this thoroughly before rolling out, after all it is their biggest money spinner, or at least I hope they have, as if it goes wrong, AdWords users won’t be the only businesses seeing profits go down, Google will as well.
