I'm sure it's been noticed that the sponsored links at the top of a Google page now have a light purple colour. Google claimed this was just an aesthetic change:
"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."
The interesting thing is that if you view your screen from above, that is, with your eyes above above the centre line, which you do when sitting in an upright position, the background colour almost disappears, making the sponsored links and organic search results look very similar. Until recently it was still easy to tell the difference between the two as the headline of an adword ad was restricted to 25 characters, which is much shorter than the top line of an organic search result.
Now however, Google are putting the second line of an adword ad on the first line, along with the headline, making the that top line as long as one from an organic search result. The result is that it's often quite dificult to tell if the top three results are organic or paid.
Compare how Google results show now to how they once did in this screenshot:
http://www.jensense.com/archives/yellowadwords.jpg
Search for 'current account' on Google now and see the difference.
What Google have done is make those top three adword places much more valuable, knowing that advertisers will bid higher prices for those 'premium' quasi-organic positions.
aesthetic change' my arse.
Google success as I understand was in supplying searchers with the most reliable and relevant search results. What they are doing now seems to go heavily against that. It may result in financial gain in the short to medium term, but I can't help thinking that this cynical attempt to increase revenue from PPC will ultimately result in their downfall - even the big ones fail in the end.
Looking at Bing and Yahoo, they are up to the same thing regarding background colour, but the ads are still clearly discernible with the shorter headline. I hope they keep things that way.
"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."
The interesting thing is that if you view your screen from above, that is, with your eyes above above the centre line, which you do when sitting in an upright position, the background colour almost disappears, making the sponsored links and organic search results look very similar. Until recently it was still easy to tell the difference between the two as the headline of an adword ad was restricted to 25 characters, which is much shorter than the top line of an organic search result.
Now however, Google are putting the second line of an adword ad on the first line, along with the headline, making the that top line as long as one from an organic search result. The result is that it's often quite dificult to tell if the top three results are organic or paid.
Compare how Google results show now to how they once did in this screenshot:
http://www.jensense.com/archives/yellowadwords.jpg
Search for 'current account' on Google now and see the difference.
What Google have done is make those top three adword places much more valuable, knowing that advertisers will bid higher prices for those 'premium' quasi-organic positions.
aesthetic change' my arse.
Google success as I understand was in supplying searchers with the most reliable and relevant search results. What they are doing now seems to go heavily against that. It may result in financial gain in the short to medium term, but I can't help thinking that this cynical attempt to increase revenue from PPC will ultimately result in their downfall - even the big ones fail in the end.
Looking at Bing and Yahoo, they are up to the same thing regarding background colour, but the ads are still clearly discernible with the shorter headline. I hope they keep things that way.
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