As you know, yesterday, Google began rolling out the new green outlined ad label for the AdWords ads. The difference is pretty basic.
Here is the old label:
Here is the new label:
Not a huge difference, in my opinion. But if you read the comments on my story from yesterday you will see a lot of people saying they did this to make more money and drive more confusion.
Google told Search Engine Land that they "had also stressed that its testing indicated the color change had no bearing on consumers' ability to distinguish ads from organic listings on the page."
So Google is there is no difference between the two ad labels. So why make the change? They said in their statement "the new ad label is more legible and continues to make our results page easier to read for our users with clear indication of our ad labeling."
So I ran a poll on Twitter asking why you think Google made the change? Here are the results:
- 13% Bored, Wanted A Change
- 46% Makes Ads Less Noticeable
- 28% Makes Ads More Noticeable
- 13% Unsure
We have about 120 responses, normally we'd get more responses here but I bet it would be more like 80% instead of 46% if I posted this poll here.
Poll: Why do you think Google changed the AdWords ad label? https://t.co/IFpn9wh8Rz
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) February 22, 2017
Take the poll above.
What do you think?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
