Google Tests Alternative Fonts

[stuartmcdonald]

Between refreshes on the same page, same adblocks, I'm seeing Times, plain serif, no serif, vanilla arial, big point, small point... what gives?

[physics]

I think publishers would be in a better place to know what fonts fit best with their sites.

That's what I meant, sorry ;)

[kate66]

Another vote to get rid of Comic. This appeared on my site today and it's horrible. Don't have anything agains Comic in the right context, but not on my dancewear site please!

[carguy84]

If it makes me more money I'm all for it, I just wish they gave me a heads up so I didn't spend so much time tracking down #*$! I did to screw up the Adsense ads lol.

[potentialgeek]

As long as they don't use Times New Roman...

The bigger issue is what fonts the site uses. Do G's tests take this into account? Not likely.

Comic font might be great for a kids site, but useless on a news site.

Context is key.

p/g

[netmeg]

I'd be satisfied enough if they just divided it between serif and sans-serif.

[Huntster]

I saw this briefly on one of my sites, but then refreshed and went back and it changed to the prior font style. No big deal. Can't control it. At least not now.

[robzilla]

I really don't think Google is doing this to fight banner blindness. I hope we'll be able to select a font for our ads in the future. If I have a site with Arial as its standard font, I'd rather have ads in Arial than Verdana.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Based on publisher feedback, we have removed Comic Sans from the current ad format experiment. Thanks again for your continued feedback and suggestions. We welcome any further feedback that you might have and assure you that it'll be passed onto the relevant team.

[icedowl]

Actually, I didn't mind Comic Sans at all and thought it actually looked pretty good.

Times New Roman is the only one I've seen that looks terrible to my eyes. Then again, I do have old eyes.

[netmeg]

Still, a lot of people objected to the Comic Sans, and they did remove it. While I'm still not terribly happy about being a guinea pig, I'm glad to know that someone is listening.

[infp]

I assume that since we can choose colors, we should be able to choose font families and sizes as well.

Proper blending or contrasting can increase CTR. But only a publisher knows how to do it properly and tastefully on their specific site. Google doesn't. So, hopefully, Google won't control it, but publishers will. Logic tells me it would benefit all parties.

[mixart]

Personally I find the new fonts harder to read, which obviously makes them less appealing. What frustrates me is that sure for some sites the new fonts might improve revenue and for others it might not - so far I'm seeing no benefits. My site has lots of picky designers/artists who the the ads just look cheaper - I hope this is something as publishers we can turn on/off.

[BaseVinyl]

Still, a lot of people objected to the Comic Sans, and they did remove it. While I'm still not terribly happy about being a guinea pig, I'm glad to know that someone is listening.

"someone" is likely not listening but just checking the CTR of 10 million burgers being served and seeing that no-one dared click on the Comic Sans and so it was removed by the robot!

OUCH!

We should never shrug our shoulders when we consider ourselves guinea-pigs! Stand up and raise your paws fellow rodents! ;)