Does link "title" color impact results?

Do you use link colors other than blue?

[farmboy]

I guess blue is still considered the default color for active hyperlinks online. (Maybe always will be?)

Anyway, I'm wondering what others have experienced when using link colors other than blue in your AdSense ads? Have you found that using other colors increase or decrease clicks?


FarmBoy

[netmeg]

I test it all the time. Blue usually wins, sometimes red creeps up, if it's enough of a contrast. Nobody seems to like green. On my dark background sites, I have some bodacious color schemes to stand out, but none seem better than the other.

All you can do is test, really. I usually rotate evenly between two or three colors through some period of time (or a thousand clicks or so, whichever comes first) and try to figure out which works the best.

Sometimes different ad units on the same page give different results (that's really confusing) I have a page where in the 468x60 spot, red links do better, but in the 160x600 spot, blue rules.

[martinibuster]

I sometimes match it up to the same style as the other links on the page.

[CMidd]

blue links, light grey url, black text has always word for me. I tried many other alternate and that combo seem to work "on white background"

[HuskyPup]

I'm with martinibuster, I usually do the use the same colour/style.

[Lame_Wolf]

I've never used blue. It does not suit my site. Cyan is the closest i've been to blue.

[netmeg]

I never used to use the standard blue either (preferring a dark blue) till on several occasions, "regular" users made the comment to me that links were supposed to be blue, that's how they recognized them as links. (They also said they should be underlined) Made me stop and think, and then start testing.

[Lame_Wolf]

I never used to use the standard blue either (preferring a dark blue) till on several occasions, "regular" users made the comment to me that links were supposed to be blue, that's how they recognized them as links.

My sites are extremely dark, so blue would not work. Yellows, greens and orange work well for me.

[pageoneresults]

Common Forms of Color Blindness - The most common form of color blindness is red/green color blindness. This type affects about 1 in 10 men and has two forms. In one form different shades of red appear dull and indistinct and in the other greens, oranges, pale reds and browns all appear as the same hue, distinguished only by their intensity.

If color alone is used to convey information, people who cannot differentiate between certain colors and users with devices that have non-color or non-visual displays will not receive the information.

You have to be real careful when choosing colors for links. You'll want to avoid Red or Green as they are the most common forms of color blindness. I've tested this with a friend who is afflicted with this. I have a few clients using a black/red/silver theme and the links are red. The only way my friend knew they were links was due to the underline. You know, that thing people remove because they want to be cool? ;)

Look at the top visited sites. That should give you a feel for "safe colors" as they got some time and research into this. Many of the Accessibility and Usability documents I read make reference to NOT using certain colors due to color blindness.

I think one of the worst things you can do is remove the underline when the link appears within primary content. I've visited more than a handful of sites who thought removing the underline was cool and it left me moving my cursor around the page to see what was a link, I hate that! And then they use <u></u> to highlight certain words. #BassAckwards

[Atomic]

I also match the ad link color with other links on a site. My experiments have shown that not matching them reduces CTR and increases bounce rate.

[Lame_Wolf]

Common Forms of Color Blindness...

Thanks, but I am aware of color blindness issues, and like I said... it works for me. YMMV

[lucy24]

I never used to use the standard blue either (preferring a dark blue) till on several occasions, "regular" users made the comment to me that links were supposed to be blue, that's how they recognized them as links. (They also said they should be underlined) Made me stop and think, and then start testing.

I was going to say: Know Your Audience. If you're writing for computer-savvy 20-year-olds they will click on everything in sight. If you're writing for their parents and grandparents who only reluctantly use computers, stay closer to the default.

Conversely: What really exasperates me as a user is when one color (without underlining) is used for links and another color (without underlining) is used for, oh, just decoration or emphasis or because it seemed like a good idea at the time-- and the user is supposed to be able to tell which is which. And if you use underlining for emphasis while not underlining links, you're getting closer to a special place in you-know-where.

If the text says "click here"-- or something similarly obvious like "home" or "back to top"-- your user of ordinary intelligence can probably figure out that it's a link. But if you have also followed the Design 101 advice and made it say something-- anything!-- other than "click", then you haven't left your users much to go with.

Could you bring yourself to compromise by making your links boldface, at least?

[zdgn]

For me, every site/scheme produces different trends. With some, only contrasting links work, on others only extreme stark contrast (e.g. site scheme = blue links on white b/g, AdSense = white links on deep blue b/g), etc.

I stopped blending text ads a long time ago because they had started to look more and more spammy. For me at least, the more detached and obvious ads appear be ads (while complementing site's layout), the more AdSense/User seems to reward/notice them.

And in some design-centric cases, I have image-only 300/336 units (with great results and no ugly half-hanging text ads to begin with.)