Is Google changing the colour of its search results links?

It seems Google is testing out a new colour for its search result links, and it's not a shade of the tried-and-true blue. It's black.

Yesterday, the tech giant was experimenting with black links in search results, so if you're still seeing classic blue links instead, consider yourself lucky. Otherwise, your links are appearing the same colour as regular black text on a typical webpage.

The change applies to links that have already been clicked, too. For example, when you typically see a link you've already clicked in Google, the blue colour link colour changes to purple.

Users are not too happy about the update.

This isn't the first time Google has tested out new colours for its links. Just a week ago, users complained on Twitter about new shades of blue and purple showing up in search results. But the move didn't seem to stick around. You can see the difference in the tweet below.

Google also tested out new shades of blue for advertisement links in early 2014. The effort was to see which shades of blue people were more likely to click on. Ultimately, Google discovered the purple-blue links were more enticing than green-blue links.

This departure to black is very different though, and it's unclear exactly why Google is testing it. Using blue links is a pretty standard design convention on the Internet and turning them black does not allow users to easily distinguish links from normal text. Colour is a big signifier in determining whether an element on a website is interactive.

"We're always running many small-scale experiments with the design of the results page," a Google spokesperson said. "We're not quite sure that black is the new blue."

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