Google switches hyperlinks to black

Google has been A/B testing black hyperlinks against traditional blue ones in search results to see which colour encourages more clicks.

It appears that the change, which has seen the headline text links change colour, although the links underneath remain as green and other text has stayed black, only affects Chrome users currently.

Those who were served the black links do not seem to be particularly happy with them and users took to Twitter, Reddit and other social networks to complain about the change.

User Joseph Madden complained: "The black unclicked links look terrible and are not very functional!"

Facelessloser, meanwhile, said: "My Google links have turned black, They look horrible. Please turn them back to blue."

Although the search giant hasn't revealed why it's made the change, the colours of links has been a significant focus for the company. Before it settled on the exact shade of blue we have come to recognise today, it tested 41 different shades, which resulted in a profit boost of $200m (1.4m) by increasing click-through rate.

Last year, Google trialled changing the colour of navigation links from red to blue, although it seems that change did go down more favourably with users, because it decided to switch to blue shortly after positive feedback

If you are one of the users whose search results have changed and you want your blue links back, you can do so by heading to "Your searches and browsing activity" in Chrome and disabling the option. You can also log out of your Google account and back in again to get the old look back.