Google has begun rolling out a new background color for the AdWords listings on Google’s search results. The new color is a pale purple, as opposed to the current pale yellow. Google has been testing the pale purple since May of this year and last week we have seen it ramp up in the number of people seeing it.
The RKG Blog has a comment from Google, which Google confirmed to us, that Google is 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.
About three years ago, Google switched from blue to the yellow background colors, with a change to how on-click events occur. You can see a picture of the old blue background colors over here.
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 are pictures:
I personally now see the pale purple background color.
Related Topics: Google: AdWords | Google: User Interface | Top News
Premium member since 01/2009
One of the reasons Google might be using this light blue/purple color is for orientation reasons. Orientation is a search behavior that everyone does without realizing it. People orient on SERPs using the top vertical bar (background), and it’s a natural eye flow to ads (which are also used to orient on a SERP) if the background color is the same.
I like to keep records of Google’s color choices. Believe it or not, since they are so well tested, I like to use (and test them) on client websites with matching color schemes. Takes some of the guesswork out of color selection.