Google To Replace Black Top Bar With Gray Colored Bar?

By Barry Schwartz

Published: January 22, 2013 at 11:48 am

Google is testing a new color for their top navigation bar. Since June 2011 Google’s top bar has had a black background color with white/gray text overlaid. Google is now testing changing the background color to a gray/white with black/dark gray text overlaid.

The picture above is from former Googler, Pedro Dias Google+ page.

It seems many searchers have begun seeing the new gray top bar as early as this past Saturday and more and more searchers are now seeing it.

I personally do not see it yet. It may be a test or it may be something Google is rolling out to their user base. I’ve sent an email to Google to find out.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.