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September 13, 2011

Google Tweaks the Search Interface

After a few weeks of testing various changes to the search results pages, Google redesigned the interface and added some of the experimental features. The search options sidebar no longer uses icons, there's a new section that displays the service's name ("Search") and the number of search results.




Google also tweaked the colors of the links and URLs, as you can see in the image above, which compares the new interface (left) with the old interface (right).

17 comments:

  1. Colours are a little bit weird, but I like them. :)

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  2. White space is cool now.

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  3. Great, using more space just for the numbers of search results! No.. Not a good thing, I hope it will be removed.

    No icons, ok, strange.

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  4. There´s a big issue if you can see it: while the old google was able to fetch the results in about 0.07 seconds, the new one needs 0,46 seconds (657% slower)!!!

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  5. I think the removal of icons is a good thing. They were unnecessary.

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  6. Removing the icons is good, but why must so much space be needlessly taken up with that bar of white space just to hold the number of results? That bar, present in Calendar, News and so on, is perhaps my biggest issue with the redesigns - it pushes the main content of the page down for no good reason, and it just looks daft having that whitespace there! It should be at least halved... Why all this waste?

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  7. More wasted space! Why?

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  8. In May 2010 you deprived us of the ability to toggle the sidebar off and on. Please, please restore that function. You might be amazed how much good will it would generate.

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  9. I really liked those icons, I don't suppose there's any way to get them back?

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  10. - Dislike the removal of the icons
    - Dislike adding the search line

    My rating on these features 0/10

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  11. agreed with all about that extra white space at the top... kind of unnerving

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  12. Interesting, but I always find it hard to judge these refreshes without a bit of ad context around them.

    Take this search for tablet on the new UI...

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/nothingelseis/6147291970/in/photostream

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  13. The visited-link color looks the same as the unvisited link color in Firefox. I cannot tell them apart.

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  14. One would have to learn the art of simplicity from Google. Loving it.

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  15. I am hating this new interface. I believe in looking out for the general results on page rather than looking out for the ads but the new interface hardly shows any results & every time have to scroll down even to open a third site. That is disappointing.

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