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Re:Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads by Alex3917 on Wednesday April 04, 2012 @10:17AM (#3797670)
Actually, it's more likely because 80+% of Google users couldn't (and probably still can't) tell the difference between the advertisements and the results:

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/Search-Engine-Users....

Re:Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads by tripzilch on Thursday April 05, 2012 @04:40PM (#3804515)
This is absolutely true. The background colour is slightly different, but on my laptop screen that's hardly visible at all, unless I tilt the screen at an extreme angle[1].

I have to say I kind of feel cheated by that trickery, every time, and it is one of the reasons (though not the most important one) that I use Google much less recently (in favour of DDG).

[1] no I'm not particularly happy about this screen, the rest of the machine is great but if I had known it would be this bad I might have picked a different model (I got an Asus EEE 1215B)

Re:Throw Out Everything You Know About Ads by Teapot on Thursday April 05, 2012 @06:06AM (#3801961)
I've seen pages where the Text Ads have the same Style as the overall page. The only thing that sets the Ad apart is a small grey text 'Ads' or the like.

I've may have seen far more of such pages. But obviously i can't tell since they're near-impossible to spot the Ads.

The trend is keeping things "by the book" from search engines point of view, And manipulate humans in subtle ways by confusing contents and ads.