• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 9, 2016

Google turned its iconic blue text hyperlinks to black in query results on search engine pages, sending searchers to tweet their displeasure on Twitter. The version of these pages feature black links rather the familiar blue.

The visual change didn't agree with those tweeting their opinion. They tweeted #BringBackTheBlue in response to the search engine testing the black links vs. the blue.

Google regularly tests minute change for a subset of users to examine how people will respond to them before deciding whether or not to roll them out to a wider user base.

Joseph Madden from Glasgow sent a tweet early Monday that resonated across the social network. He wrote "@google Google! The black unclicked links look terrible and are not very functional! #BringBackTheBlue"

Others like Matt Elliott followed by tweeting "Google! Black links on Google aren't useful" and Chris Backer tweeted that "monochromatic links hid history, make it hard to re-find stuff."

Black headline links do not stand out from the descriptive copy below, especially in mobile search engine query results, which becomes a major flaw in the design.

Some users threatened to use Bing until Google stopped testing the black hyperlink color. "Totally using Bing until they fix this," writes bratt777 in Google's product forum. "Can't believe what I'm saying but it'll have to do."

While some searchers began reporting the change Sunday, Jennifer Slegg, founder at TheSEMPost, reports seeing the test late Friday or early Saturday. She wrote in a post that it also changes the look for featured snippets.

"There are multiple threads on the Webmaster Help forums as well as countless reports on Twitter, so this seems to be a pretty widespread test – far more than the usual 1%," Slegg wrote. "Or people just might be so confused about the choice of black that they are much more vocal about this than other tests."

Tony McCreath's answer to the change: "You're part of an experiment. Just wait for it to end."