Why does google change when you search helvetica? – Curious google search helvetica – Why we hate comic sans video – Helvetica not comic sans! – For April Fools, Google Goes Comic Sans & Ousts Helvetica – Search Engine Land
Don’t tell Google that Comic Sans is dead. The company has announced it’s coming back for all products, at least for April Fools Day.
The April Fools joke begins with a page explaining that Google has conducted research into various fonts and found through eye tracking that Comic Sans beats other fonts:
More fun comes in the form of an extension from Google for its Google Chrome browser. Install Comic Sans For Everyone, and all your search results will appear with that font:
But it’s not just search results that change. any site you go to will be Comic Sansified. Here’s the Search Engine Land home page:
Don’t want to install the extension? Comic Sans might take over your search results anyway. Search for comic sans, and you’ll get results in that font, no extension needed:
Looks like the “Ban Comic Sans” site listed in those results picked the wrong week for Google to be reporting it has malware:
No fooling, they should read our article to solve this, Google explains Malware Warning Policy & how To Fix your Site.
Finally, perhaps the ideal part of all this. Search for helvetica, and that will turn your results into Comic Sans on Google, automatically:
If you don’t see this happening automatically, try closing your browser and restarting. still no luck? Try another browser, or try visiting a different Google service, like Google UK. I couldn’t get it to work originally for me until I did a browser restart.
But wait, there’s more. Here’s another short video on the topic, from David Kadavy (who also wrote a good article on the topic, why you Hate Comic Sans):
For other April Fools pranks this day from Google and around the search world, see our post below:
- It’s Over: Google has already Won April Fools Day 2011
Related Topics: Search & Society: April Fool’s
About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited dominance on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a individualized blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google Buzz and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan
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