New - Purple Background for Adwords Ads

[imbckagn]

Anyone else seeing purple ADwords ADs above the SERP's? I've never noticed this before and it definitely grabbed my attention. I'm thinking it will do the same to searchers.

[tedster]

Yep - and according to the RKG blog, Google had a short comment:

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 [googleblog.blogspot.com] 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.

[rimmkaufman.com...]

[imbckagn]

I'm thinking this is going to have a noticeable negative impact on organic traffic, at least until searchers get use to it.

[tedster]

How's that? I think it's a bit clearer than the pale yellow, so people will more easily recognize the paid ads. How do you see it hurting?

[Robert Charlton]

It's an interesting tradeoff... clearer than the pale yellow, and people will more readily be able to identify them as ads, but the color also attracts the eye more.

I'd love to see some heatmap studies on this one.

[trakkerguy]

people will more readily be able to identify them as ads

That has to be a good thing IMO. It really bugs me that most people don't realize they are PAID ADS. It's deceptive and dishonest to blend them in with Organic.

[Reno]

I have no proof of this statement, but it would not surprise me if this is Google recognizing the extreme unhappiness that webmasters/siteowners felt when they first saw that the ads looked very much like the organics. If there's a shred of truth to that observation, then the G "aesthetic" explanation quoted above is spin, but hey, that's ok. I'm with tedster on this one -- a clearer definition separating paid ads from organics is a good thing. Will be interested to see the impact on visitor traffic in the coming weeks.

...................

[UK_Web_Guy]

I can't see this decreasing CTR from the ads - google aren't going to look to decrease their revenue!

[imbckagn]

Your average searcher doesn't know the difference between paid results or organic. They are going to click the results that stand out the most, purple.

[Simsi]

Your average searcher doesn't know the difference between paid results or organic. They are going to click the results that stand out the most, purple.

If it didn't say "Sponsored Links" next to them I might agree, but as it does, so I don't LOL.

I think the move to purple is good for us webmasters personally, but I still don't like the fact Sponsored Links are at the top of the page. OK it's a money thing, but it can be counterproductive by pushing down the sites in organic. If the algo is as good as it should be, those would be more relevant than Paid Links most of the time.


Sort of a catch22 for Google. Make more money, but dilute the relevancy of search results. If you get the balance wrong, you could lose the people who click the Paid Links and effectively generate the income.

[imbckagn]

The sponsored link is tiny and in the far right corner which is not prominent at all, LOL. I sit number one for many very competitive terms and have seen a noticeable decrease in clicks since it went purple.

[aristotle]

Some searchers could mistakenly think that the purple background is just a way to highlight the top results.

If google really wanted to differentiate paid ads from organics results, they wouldn't have much trouble finding better ways to do it.