Some of you may have already noticed, but Google has started displaying a new background color for the AdWords listings on their search results. They are now showing a pale purple, as opposed to the pale yellow they had previously been displaying. Apparently, Google had been testing the pale purple since May of this year and last week they began to show it to more searchers.
Google has since confirmed that they are indeed replacing the yellow with the purple background color. More and more users will see the new purple color and by the end of this week, all Google search properties should see the change. It is an interesting change because only about three years ago, Google switched from blue to the yellow background colors.
Here is Google’s official statement:
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.
Here is the transition of background colors over the years:
Have you noticed this already? It would be interesting to find out why they made the change, but if I had to put my money on it I am betting it resulted in more revenue for them.
