Other observations:

1) The background color of the top-of-page sponsored links sometime change for the same advertiser. Hit 'refresh' several times and you may see it happen.

2) Google is obscuring the URL that should appear in my browser's status bar. Sure, Google is kind enough for the status bar to say "go to www.Ebay.com" however, I want to know the exact URL I'm going to before I go there. This reduces the usability of advertisements for me. I distrust a URL when it has been toyed with.

Google may not be evil, but between the wild click zones and obscuring the true URL, my browser is simmering.

Posted by: Jack on September 13, 2002 08:42 PM

 

Are there any times that it is good to mess with URLs in the browser status bar? The only practice that I don't mind is when people include both the URL and some text. Text alone...sucks.

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on September 13, 2002 09:09 PM

 

Too me, I see those shaded "Sponsored Links" as the same as a banner add.. Text or an image it doesn't make a difference to me (cept the google ones are revelent* and not flashing or animated) so it kinda makes sense to have the entire banner area clickable...

As for the urls.. I don't like it either.. it seems to break usability since I'm trained to know something is gonna show up there, and when it doesn't, I'm thinking something is wrong (although they do show the domain name for ever ad, and any click thru is going through atleast 1 crazy url for tracking)

* I'm starting to ignore google ads since they don't really seem to be that revelent anymore.. For example, I know for 50% of the things i search for I'm going to get the same ebay ad with _SEARCH_TERM_ just filled in.. numb me with those and I'll never see something that actually might interest me...

Posted by: TimW on September 13, 2002 09:29 PM

 

My issue with the click zone is that the right-side of the page looks blank. When I'm choosing where to click on the page to make the window my dominant window again, I do it quick. Half a second. Quarter of a second. I don't know. It's automatic.

Remember, I'm clicking into the Google page that is probably obscured by other windows. The last thing I want to do is pause for a full second to think about and remember that Google is presenting these big empty areas as click zones.

I used to read a news web site that played this trick with news stories (the first paragraph of each story was on the front page, all paragraphs were clickable even though they did not look like links). I had to give up that site because it became unbearable.

I hate to say it, but it would be easier for me if Google used regular ads. It's more honest. It's more usable. Gosh, or better yet, just make the blue underlined text clickable and leave the rest of the page alone.

Posted by: Jack on September 13, 2002 11:11 PM

 

Perhaps you should get a browser that supports tabbed browsing, or at least one that doesn't follow a link when you highlight the window. I can see why that would be very annoying.

Posted by: Aaron Swartz on September 14, 2002 09:34 PM

 

Aaron, the browser is functioning normally. Google has engineered the link zone to work that way. I am not merely hovering over the link, I am clicking the link because it appears to be an unlinked, blank area of the page. I use -- people use -- blank areas of a page for this very purpose, to click into a window and make it the dominant window.

The issue is that Google has created banner links that under certain circumstances do not appear to be links.

Posted by: Jack on September 15, 2002 10:38 AM