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Comment by recoiledsnake | Hacker News Reader

PC loses to Web ads is more likely.

I think Google's got better at getting people to click on ads. For example, one of the following is a search result and the other is an ad. How many people can differentiate between them on various monitors?

http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png

I remember the time when Google differentiated itself by clearly marking ads, now it's no longer true for high value keywords.

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It might be easier to tell the ad from the search result if you hadn't cut out the part that reads, and I quote:

"Ads related to mesothelioma:"

Stop this trolling. You're quite simply lying to people with that kind of nonsense. It doesn't belong anywhere, much less here.

I looked at the original search and while this text is there, and there's a colored highlight over the ads, I could imagine myself clicking the ad accidentally in a hurry, or someone less knowledgeable about the way Google runs Adwords to confuse the two.

What part of your point (which I don't disagree with at all, btw) makes it OK to post a deliberately edited screenshot like recoiledsnake did?

I guess I don't really understand the problem here. If the ad is just as relevant (and if you're going to click it, thinking its part of the results, then I assume it is), what's the problem? If you don't like ads, use an ad blocker.

The title of a link isn't what makes it just as relevant -- if that was the case, what's all of Google's magic sauce for? Google does a pretty good job of ranking relevance, then sells the first spot to the highest bidder. It's a competely normal and ethical business model, but I can easily imagine people being ignorant of this.

Bid is only one factor. See http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

Relax, why not post a full screenshot yourself? Sorry I am on a mobile device right now or I would, but the point is that the text you quoted is two ad results above. So while scanning results, it's easy to not notice the subtle background change between those two results. It's hard to see where the ads end and the results begin, that's why I highlighted the part between the ad and the search result.

If someone can post the full screenshot, please do.

http://i.imgur.com/QfX5I.jpg

I can't remember exactly when, but they clearly changed the colour difference to be much more subtle at some point. At home I see the difference, but on the work dell monitors you can only tell where the ads stop if you view the screen from a very low angle...

It's worth mentioning that Bing ads are even less apparently demarcated. At least with Adwords there's a significant contrast created by the use of the yellow which human eyes are particularly sensitive to. I am looking at a Bing ad right now and I am really struggling to see where the ad ends and the white of the search results begins. Not to mention that Adwords has a "Ads related to {}" text along with an information icon next to that. Bing ads just have a small "Ads" in the top right corner of the ad (away from where the eyeballs are likely to be).

It's quite clear to me which is which just from the color differences. You also cut the "ads related mesothelioma (?)" at the top of the section, which should make it even more clear. And there's the fact that people who understand the difference have already learned where Google ads are on the page.

Every HN reader knows that. But "normal" web users do not know it (anymore?). Every so often I see some anecdotal evidence of that when I watch people doing searches.

There are limits to the amount of due diligence companies should have to do to ensure that people know they are clicking on ads. Anyone who is interested in avoiding clicking on ads will easily identify Google's, or not see them at all via a software solution. For the rest, there's not much short of an acknowledgement overlay that will get the message across reliably (for text ads -- image ads are easier, but google doesn't have them).

>There are limits to the amount of due diligence companies should have to do to ensure that people know they are clicking on ads.

There are also limits on disguising search results as ads.

>For the rest, there's not much short of an acknowledgement overlay that will get the message across reliably (for text ads -- image ads are easier, but google doesn't have them)

Really? Just increasing the contrast or adding a border around the border or using extra spacing as a separator or another separator can help a lot. But it's hard to make changes that hurt the bottom line. Changing it the opposite way is much easier. Google has a lot of UI and UX experts and I don't think the changes are accidental at all. In fact, they must be very carefully planned.

Edit: Found an old screenshot where the difference is much more apparent.

http://www.jensense.com/archives/adsensehijack.gif

Basically, clutter up the page more? Facebook has no background, nor do Yahoo! (front page) or Reddit (sidebar). Bing's and Yahoo!'s SERPs and Reddit's sponsored link are near Google's in terms of contrast and signage. Although Reddit opts for a border but conflates ad space with space that is used to promote results algorithmically, because it's not sufficiently confusing I guess. In terms of HN darlings, DuckDuckGo is actually worse (approximately the same contrast, "Sponsored result" doublespeak rather than just calling a spade a spade). You're asking Google to follow a standard of behavior that none of the other major sites I visit reach.

In terms of industry norms, Google is about as good as it gets. Maybe you feel that's not enough, and I guess that's a qualitative judgment that you're free to make. People will differ on things like this occasionally :P. I'd ask for some kind of harm analysis at the very least before I accept that there's anything untoward going on.

Which search engine does it better?

The color contrast from the white background is extremely low #FFF8E7 vs. #FFFFFF and there's deliberately a lack of border. The color difference is almost invisible based on monitor settings and the age of the user.

I believe these are relatively recent changes, earlier the background was blue or purple. I guess Google "optimized" the color and appearance to gain more clicks.

I've noticed that when I'm on a laptop with a glossy screen, the difference in background colors are a lot harder to distinguish.

Yep. Google is still a one trick pony when it comes to revenue:

Advertising revenue in 2011 was 97 percent of Google's revenue!

Up there with other one-trick ponies like Exxon Mobil, I guess.

Saying that the PC loses to the web is like saying that cars lose to the new highway.

Sure, maybe everyone is replacing their car with a motorcycle, but then the car is losing to the motorcycle, not the highway.

It actually makes sense.

The PC as a platform for running your applications and holding your data is on its way out, being replaced by the web. The PC, the box you run your browser on, will remain, but the applications you run will only see the browser on one side and their Unix-like OS on the other.

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