Those are the only things I've seen at the top at Google.
[Added]And yes, the background colors on those change if you reload the page. Sounds like that's what you're seeing.
Like this? [google.com...]
Added: Yep, JayC that's the critter.
[edited by: rfgdxm1 at 1:18 am (utc) on Mar. 21, 2003]
They are plainly sepatated from the rest of the SERPS by colored bars and I've never seen more than 2 at a time.
I've been seeing these for quite a while.
I find the colored bar deceptive. Barely distiguishable from the ordinary SERPs. Looks to me Google did this precisely to make these not stand out.
Barely distiguishable from the ordinary SERPs
to me (and to a lot of people) it looks like a banner, I don't even see them anymore when I look at the SERP.
leo
rfgdxm1
You are playing a joke for 1st April 2003, yes?
Shak
[webmasterworld.com...]
If you work on a laptop, depending on resolutions and sunlight reflections, sometimes its really hard to distinguish.
I'm actually a little bit annoyed by this. If I'm showing up #1 on the SERP, the only reason Google could have for putting my ad at the top of the page is to get people to click it instead of the SERPs. Why would Google want to do this? Because they make money if somebody clicks my ad, but don't if they click the SERP. So I may get charged a click-through fee for somebody who would've just clicked in for free anyways. Very frustrating.
These sponsored listings are not visible for non-commercial terms
Rarely. However, I've seen lots of Adwords before. It seems that these deceptive premium listings tend to appear on the more obvious commercial commercial search terms. From that link by vitaplease, I see this issue of deceptive advertising by Google has been brought up before.
I think the laptop contrast could play a part in making them seem more SERP-like, but for normal viewing they look like banner ads, which most people mentally filter by now I would think.
I think it is your trained eyes. Looks to me Google had done this in a way to deceive the untrained eyes.
Most the other engines plaster the first half of the page with sponsor matches.
I find the pastels that they use to be very obvious. But if I crank up the brightness like my mom does, they almost disappear.
My girlfriends laptop doesn't have adjustable brightness and they are always washed out.
One of my old laptops just has a very small color selection, and they do not show up well.
If they go with a more noticable color for these cases, I would become distracting on those monitors that handle color well.
I don't think they are doing it to be deceptive. The color is only in addition to the "Sponsored Link" message. I do think that there might be additional things that they might be able to do to make it clearer for those of you that are having problems with your displays. But don't ask me what they should do, because the current system works for me.
I think those ads take up more than enough of my screen. I do not want them to move the real SERPS further down by adding a big SPONSORED LINK above them. I would rather find out what is broken about the current version that is incredibly obvious to me.
I am viewing this on a modern, high quality monitor at normal settings. I can definitely see the pastel background. However, in my mind that doesn't mean "this is an ad". Now if they had a big "SPONSORED LINKS" above these, and they were clearly set apart from the normal SERPs, that would be OK. The way Google has done this in my mind seems that it was intentional trickery and deception on their part. Sure, fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. However, that Google has taken the low road doesn't make me think well about them. What is incredibly obvious to you is to me a sneaky, dishonest attempt by Google to make an ad appear like a normal search result.
I think somebody here is just looking for something to complain about.
But then again RFG, they are extremely targeted ads, so I don't see it as a big problem. Much successful advertising masquerades as something else in any medium.
Since Google started using the sponsored ads above the search results I have noticed two things.
1.) In those results where my sites are in the 1st or 2nd position on the page, There has been very little change in the click throughs.
2.) Any SERP position lower on the page has shown a significant loss of traffic.
Perhaps this is because the results have been moved down to provide room for the Sponsored ads and to see the results below the first two requires scrolling, at least on many monitors.
