Yet another advertising-related change has come to Google in the run-up to Search Engine Strategies 2007 New York: Google shifted the One Box background color from blue to yellow.
Tracking Google’s rapid-fire releases and changes in recent weeks has been an exercise in itself. Pay Per Action ads, AdSense unit changes, and now an update to One Box.
It’s been a fixture on Google’s search results for some time, a blue box containing the top AdWords advertisements for a given query. Some people have spotted a different look for it from time to time, and now many more should start seeing the yellow-toned background on Google.com.
The official word comes from Daniel Dulitz on the Inside AdWordsblog about the color change, as well as a tweak to what’s clickable inside the One Box:
First, we thought it was time for a new look: after months of testing, we decided to switch the background color of the top ads from blue to yellow. Second, we’ve modified what counts as a click in this box to be consistent with what counts as a click for the ads on the right hand side. Instead of clicking anywhere in the box, users now need to click on the link in the top line of an ad in order to be taken to an advertiser’s site. Together, these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad, while making our highest quality ads more visible.
Andrew Goodman suggested at his Traffick blog that perhaps banner blindness had set in for Google visitors:
Were CTR’s declining? We know that rotating ad design in banner campaigns sometimes props up CTR’s. Personally, I haven’t seen much evidence of declining CTR up there at the top, but you never know.
Considering Google’s continued financial success with online advertising, its bread and butter, those click-throughs probably perform just fine. But there’s always room for improvement.
