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May 5, 2007

Google Testing New Search Results Layout?

Duncan Riley

97 comments »

google.jpgA tip in today pointing to Beyond Teck, a site that claims to have a screen shot of a new layout for Google’s search results page.

I can’t confirm the veracity of the screen shot, if it’s photoshopped then it’s a very good effort.

The screen shot purports to show Google testing a new layout for their search results. Of note is the introduction of a left navigation bar that directly links to related Google search options, with aesthetically pleasing gradient dividers breaking up the search results from the search box and newly listed options.

Google has a track record of testing new features on an unsuspecting public, and this isn’t the first time there have been reports of Google testing a similar layout to this. Ars Technica reported a similar layout in February 2006 and a thread on Webmaster World in September 2006 spotted similar changes, although without the use of gradients.

After a little digging, I found that Dan Baxter has also spotted the new layout and provided a screen shot that would seem to back up the shot from Beyond Teck.

Google has been shy in tweaking a service that has famously worked so well for it, so these tests may never be rolled out permanently, however in the continuing evolution of Google they could do worse.
google2.jpg
google1.jpg

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Comments

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  1. Ben

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    I get the same top menu, but not sure about that LHS menu.
    The top bar I get 50% of my random searches.
    Google Doing their stuff

  2. Kewtr

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:16 pm

    I would much rather that than the current options for photos and other things near the search box. I would guess they’re doing some rather intensive testing before they roll out. It’s definitely hard not to be conservative with success like theirs.

  3. Zaid

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:17 pm

    I have noticed that in past few days they’ve changed the left hand side of BLOG search to look a lot like what’s in the above screenshot.

  4. eBusiness

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:22 pm

    The above screenshot is real. I’ve observed it on and off for a non US ip address.

    http://www.ebizmba.com

  5. Adam Kalsey

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:23 pm

    No ads? That’s interesting.

  6. Duncan Riley

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:27 pm

    Adam
    I checked the ads part, indeed it was one of my concerns about whether the shot was real or not; from here (in Australia) Digg only results in one ad next to the search results, I’m guessing depending on geographic location that a search for Digg could result in zero ads. Dan Baxter’s shot includes an ad right hand side though on a search for “dealcatcher”.

  7. Yakov

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    For sure, they have to evolve their lay-out to keep up with new trends and user preferences. How far can they really go?

  8. alexanderpink

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:30 pm

    No ads when I search digg.

  9. Josh

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:31 pm

    No cookie trick?

  10. Rehuel

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:32 pm

    Well, at least they start filling up the whitespace a little, since a lot more people seem to be browsing at 1024×768.

  11. Duncan Riley

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:38 pm

    Rehuel
    you should try it at 1680 x 1050 :-)

  12. Pallab

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:45 pm

    I prefer the current version.
    If they want to use the white space and add the sidebar, then it should be a right-sidebar rather than a left-sidebar. That would ensure that the main content (search results) is visible even when I have the browser in windowed mode or using low resolution.

  13. Ken

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:48 pm

    This doesn’t look like a huge change, and if Google’s going to make changes I would assume that they’d be incremental. I think these are a step in the right direction, making more use of the sides. I don’t like seeing image results above my search results. I didn’t search for images!

  14. haha

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:49 pm

    I can confirm this. I’ve had this page randomly appear sometimes when Im using Google.

    Its a pain in the arse. Definitely prefer the current format.

    Google - if you listening DONT CHANGE THE FKING PAGE!

    :D

  15. Nicolas

    May 5th, 2007 at 11:59 pm

    Google Blogoscoped gives hint to test this new result pages yourselves.

    It’s not really like the redesign ArsTechnica presented in early 06 : it seems more clever as Google is testing the categorization of your search queries, in order to show their verticals where the results would be optimum.

    For instance, “Product Search” is put as first result, if you search for “digital cameras”, “canon eos”… See screenshot on my website.

  16. musicmixingguru

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:40 am

    wow people. for a bunch of geeks yall didn’t notice that google is testing its new history viewer. you can turn it on after you search for something

  17. Duncan Riley

    May 6th, 2007 at 1:00 am

    musicmixingguru
    you seemed to have missed the crux of the post, the history stuff is old news, we’re talking layout.

  18. Josh

    May 6th, 2007 at 1:01 am

    Oh my god, this is amazing. They are geniuses. Searching the internet is going to be so much better now. It gives me an idea for a new HTML feature I’m thinking of patenting. I’ll call it “frames”.

    Did they use FrontPage 98 themes to create this?

  19. alexanderpink

    May 6th, 2007 at 1:09 am

    Here’s a shot for you Mike :)

    http://img247.imageshack.us/im.....nchkb8.jpg

    By the way, it shows like this for me now, both in classic mode and igoogle.

  20. Andy

    May 6th, 2007 at 1:13 am

    Photoshopped? Why would someone think something like this would be easier to create with Photoshop than with just creating the, obviously minimal, HTML and taking a screenshot? Now “photoshop” is a verb that means “manually modified”? Are we going to start calling genetically modified plants “photoshopped plants”? And a custom tailored suit is “photoshopped clothing” now?

  21. Drew

    May 6th, 2007 at 1:28 am

    here is another screenshot, with adblock, filterset g, and costomize google extensions… perhaps one of them is blocking the left bar

    http://www.imagemirror.com/showpic.php?pic=gn.jpg

    (yes, i am trusting enough to not black out my email :-)

  22. Immad

    May 6th, 2007 at 1:42 am

    I saw this new google a month+ ago on my sisters PC, I was like whoo, but didn’t think it was techcrunch worthy :-).

  23. Dustin Brewer

    May 6th, 2007 at 2:00 am

    I think the overall design looks promising but I think it still needs just a little work to make it look nice.

    I’m glad to see Google offering a little change I just hope they don’t get too carried away. We all use them because the site is a straight forward minimalist design with other worldly abilities.

  24. vaspers the grate

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:06 am

    Josh: you sound pretty tough without having a web site. You prefer, I assume, that everything stay the same all the time, without experimenting?

    I don’t get you, mr. anonymous.

  25. secreeeeet

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:14 am

    Hmm.. This is old. They have tried this before some years ago. Do an image search for “new google layout” or if you are too lazy, see following links:

    http://www.modernseo.com/searc.....w-layouts/
    (that’s from 2006)

    http://images.google.com/image.....e%20layout

  26. Jochem Prins

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:32 am

    I’ve seen a slighty different SERP a couple of times for the last few days. The ‘related searches’ are moved to a different spot as well. Don’t think it’s an improvement btw. See http://www.jochemprins.com/200.....provement/

  27. agouram

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:48 am

    Hello Guys ,

    No more questioning you can see it live in Google Switzerland .

    take a look at :
    http://www.google.ch/search?hl.....&meta=

  28. vaspers the grate

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:56 am

    I have yet to see this new layout when searching from iGoogle.

  29. vaspers the grate

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:58 am

    agouram: I followed that link. Didn’t see any radically new interface or layout with sidebars, etc.

  30. vaspers the grate

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:59 am

    Those are horrible screen captures. What tool are you using?

  31. Chris

    May 6th, 2007 at 4:24 am

    The above design is real, here I wrote an article how to get this layout.

    To create this new interface, click here: http://tinyurl.com/2nxg5e

    To create the sidebar, click here: http://tinyurl.com/3dt9u8

    It works great and is a much better interface than regular search results.

  32. Akeru

    May 6th, 2007 at 4:26 am

    Here is a way to see the new layout according to this site :

    http://blog.outer-court.com/ar.....4-n11.html

    Not tested though.

  33. Wes

    May 6th, 2007 at 4:26 am

    For a site like Google its good to introduce changes gradually. From the screenshots it appears there will be minimal changes to the current setup which is good but its hard to tell what the final product will be if this is just testing.

  34. Tim

    May 6th, 2007 at 5:14 am

    Akeru’s method works for me.
    I much prefer this new look. I was thinking google was looking a little dated and needed a little redesign.

    -Tim

  35. jda

    May 6th, 2007 at 5:21 am

    this layout has been around for a while. the big change seems to be the introduction of a gradient - if that’s good enough new for techCrunch now, then I’ve got a whole bunch of meaningless crap to send in.

  36. ola

    May 6th, 2007 at 5:56 am

    A decade later, 12000 more employees, countless investments & acquisitions, and all Google can come up with is this?! I’m not impressed. And that’s an understatement.

  37. alex mcroberts

    May 6th, 2007 at 6:43 am

    ive had that layout occasionally for the past few months….only seems to happen every 100th search or so…

  38. asha

    May 6th, 2007 at 8:18 am

    It’s a interesting new layout, but it will cause problems if they roll it out to the general public in it’s current form. It is visually strange having had the new layout as the seemingly default layout for all of my google searches for the last two days.

  39. Marcus

    May 6th, 2007 at 8:20 am

    I have seen the exact same thing in thepast days on Google.com.The interesting thing is that the left navigation bar is not static but contextual, meaning if you search for a book (e.g. Harry Potter) Google Books shows up first in the navigation bar (on the left hand side). If you search for a CD the (Google) music category shows up first. If you search for a product, Google product search (formerly known as Froogle) is one of the top categories.

  40. Happi Like a Hippo

    May 6th, 2007 at 8:39 am

    I see that the About Google page also has a new look already!

    Look at http://bp2.blogger.com/_ZG9BHc.....google.jpg

  41. rangga

    May 6th, 2007 at 9:49 am

    Google goes web 2.0 (layout theme)!!! yah I saw that too, I thought because I changed my firefox theme LOL

  42. agouram

    May 6th, 2007 at 9:52 am

    Hello everyone,

    sorry for my last post , the link i gave was not exactly what i wanted to give , if you follow the instruction in the Url proposed in the original post and be patient a little while you will definitely end up with the new Google Search Interface.
    (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060326-6460.html)

    here is a pic from my browser:
    http://www.flickr.com/photo_zo.....amp;size=o

  43. Ramesh

    May 6th, 2007 at 10:05 am

    This LHS layout search result page has appeared a couple of times when I’ve searched. So I would say it is very much possible that they are trying to bring that out.

  44. fredhead

    May 6th, 2007 at 11:21 am

    ask.com have been a lot more innovative than this in SERP design. this is just an imitation of askx.com, and a poor one at that.

  45. Brett

    May 6th, 2007 at 11:22 am

    I can also confirm this. I’ve been seeing the new result layout for the past week on one of my computers pretty consistently. Another computer displays the traditional layout (haven’t noticed the new layout on it at least). I’m on a 1680×1050 display and this does help to fill the screen a little more - lots of whitespace on the right-side in the traditional layout.

  46. Rishi

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    Nice to see my post being featured on techcrunch. And just to confirm, this screenshot is not photoshopped. I wouldn’t dare photoshop something like this. But to me it looks like Google was just testing out a new layout, and it was only available for a limited time for people who used the new “web history” feature (or signed into Google when searching not quite sure about that). The search results pages have returned to normal now.

  47. Josh

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    I have had this exact layout and i have had a new google images one

  48. David

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    It would be great if they had a randomise results option, where they did the search but all the results were tossed up and given to you in random order rather than in the order of what they calculate to be relevant.

  49. Manoj

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

    Yeah, I observed this way back in January on my flock browser. http://www.manojkumar.in/2007/.....pages.html

  50. Roger

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    Seems like google is fixing to copy http://www.clusty.com/

    Clusty.com even has a search page set up for the Nintento Wii - http://wii.clusty.com/

    http://clusty.com/about —>
    About
    Who we are
    Clusty got its start in Pittsburgh, PA in 2004 when the search software company Vivísimo decided to take its award-winning search technology to the web.

    Vivísimo was founded in 2000 by three Carnegie Mellon University scientists who decided to tackle the problem of information overload in web search. Rather than focusing just on search engine result ranking, we realized that grouping results into topics, or “clustering,” made for better search and discovery. As search became a necessity for web users, Vivísimo developed a service robust enough to handle the variety of information the everyday web user was after. The result was Clusty: an innovative way to get more out of every search.

    What makes Clusty unique?
    Clusty is a whole new way to search the web.

    Clusty queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. This “metasearch” approach helps raise the best results to the top and push search engine spam to the bottom.

    But what really makes Clusty unique is what happens after you search. Instead of delivering millions of search results in one long list, our search engine groups similar results together into clusters. Clusters help you see your search results by topic so you can zero in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items. When was the last time you went to the third or fourth page of the search results? Rather than scrolling through page after page, the clusters help you find results you may have missed or that were buried deep in the ranked list.

    And with a name like Clusty, it’s gotta be good!

  51. Hensel Rachmunsen

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:56 pm

    New layout confirmed. Other than the new bar gradient on top of SERP. The new left column basically contains two sections:

    1) Traditional Google categories to focus content format on (images, maps, video, etc..)

    2) A section called “Refined” results (this is really the new stuff). It shows dynamic contextual categories. For example, if searching “Dogs,” it shows dog breeds, dog pictures, dogs for sale, dog facts, etc…
    After playing around a while with it, I’ve found that these refined categories are built on real time depending on the context and in general seem very relevant to the queries I entered.

    Don’t expect dramatic layout changes but overall UI looks helpful and intuitive in terms of content access.

    However, I still prefer Kosmix.com. It looks much cooler and richer…

  52. vijay kumar

    May 6th, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    Looks Great !!!

    I have Included this article on my blog too :
    http://www.redpepper.co.in/200.....ts-layout/

  53. rama

    May 6th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    I get this now (and have for a while), what’s so different or new?

    ??

  54. Chris

    May 6th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    The new design in Google looks and works great, has a web 2.0 feel. Neat and simple. It is also reported in ZDnet.com, http://tinyurl.com/2u7xrq
    it is a a simple technique, once you add a javascript code, you can also see this new interface. It just take a few steps.

  55. Sid

    May 6th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    Well i’ve seen this layout around 2-3 weeks back. Although i thought it was a browser quirk at that time. I couldn’t reproduce it in IE or firefox. Only in opera was it showing it to me this way. I figured it was one of the stupid UserJS i had recently installed that was casuing this. Too bad i didn’t blog about it….dammit!!

  56. mf

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:03 pm

    Get a life, people. Who really cares?

  57. web tv

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:04 pm

    Nice. It’s about time Google does something new with search resoults.

  58. Market Matador

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    Woohoo! This turned out to be the first submitted Digg article to reach the coveted status of “Popular Story!”

    http://digg.com/tech_news/Goog.....lts_Layout

    Awesome,

    -Sam from MarketMatador.com

  59. Sexy Girl

    May 6th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

    It looks real. Could take a little getting used to.

  60. Aaron Myers

    May 6th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    Yeah, this is just a new layout that they are testing. It’s the 2nd one, more at blog.outer-court.com

  61. samsonsu

    May 6th, 2007 at 5:06 pm

    this is not fake.

    i saw the same layout some day last week when using google. but it’s gone when i refresh that page. looks like they accidentally allowed me to connect to their test site somehow…

  62. Philipp Lenssen

    May 6th, 2007 at 5:17 pm

    Google is testing a couple of different prototypes at the moment. Above experiment is a merger of two older layout experiments. You can actually set this merger to be your “default Google” by switching a cookie:
    http://blog.outer-court.com/ar.....4-n11.html

    Other recent or older layout variations include:
    http://blog.outer-court.com/ar.....8-n33.html
    http://blog.outer-court.com/ar.....3.html#n52
    http://blog.outer-court.com/ar.....2-n72.html

  63. Professor Print

    May 6th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    There is NO way Google would ever do a design like this… it’s a horrible UI.
    1. It looks very amateur..
    2. It doesn’t account for Adwords at all… there is more real estate on that screen shot for the “number of results displayed” than anything else..
    The left nav for result parsing is a good idea, but everything else is something Google would never do on any large scale, or outside of the Google lab.

  64. topazsamos.com

    May 6th, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    My searches on google have been coming up with a left nav bar for the past couple of weeks. Sometimes I get the nav bar and others I don’t.

  65. Nate Dawg

    May 6th, 2007 at 6:55 pm

    @topazsamos.com - Ditto.

  66. Chetan

    May 6th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    I dont see any changes yet..

    BTW nice new layout they are trying.

  67. Marah Marie

    May 6th, 2007 at 8:11 pm

    I was going to say I’ve been getting results displayed the same way every now and then for the last few weeks when using Google Blog Search, but I think Philip confirmed the fact that they *are* experimenting with the design in his comment above.

    My opinion is it’s not an improvement over the old design–maybe it’s better for Web search results (I haven’t tried that yet), but it’s an extremely unwieldy add-on to Blog Search, which rarely turns up anything relevant to my search terms in the first place.

    Before getting all design-makeover-happy why doesn’t Google focus on changing the algorithm so that Web results actually sport fresh news you want to read and Blog results actually turn up blogs that aren’t by Michael Arrington and are fresh and relevant to your search terms instead of old, stale posts with maybe one keyword in the whole entry that pertains to what you searched for?

    It’s like me saying, “Hmmm..how do I attract more visitors to my blog…how about adding sidebar navigation that keeps on pointing to the same off-topic, irrelevant content…THAT will work.”

    No, it won’t, but hell, it’s good for a quick laugh.

  68. S

    May 7th, 2007 at 1:12 am

    And the complication of Google continues. They get farther from their philosophy everyday.

  69. Windows VPS Hosting

    May 7th, 2007 at 2:09 am

    One good thing about this new desing is that their are no ads. :)

    Google won’t implement the desing because it’s seems very unprofessional.

    I’m googling a lot but I haven’t seen that live layout. :(

  70. Phill Midwinter

    May 7th, 2007 at 2:21 am

    Then I’d be a damn fool to think any different

  71. Pierce

    May 7th, 2007 at 3:34 am

    you can type this into the addressbar:

    javascript:document.cookie=”PREF=ID=fddb01133a87d314:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1177334998:LM=1177334998:GM=1:S=OOg0FEVzpPplxe9J;path=/;domain=.google.com”

    hey presto you have that layout, though I cant seem to get the bar on the left.

    Pierce

  72. Shyam Pathak

    May 7th, 2007 at 4:25 am

    pls comment on myside.
    Thanks

  73. Kemal Can

    May 7th, 2007 at 7:38 am

    google!

  74. tv online

    May 7th, 2007 at 7:45 am

    lol that’s pretty tricky..spellcheck run amok.

  75. John Fitzsimmons

    May 7th, 2007 at 7:49 am

    This is old news. They have been doing this on and off for a long time now. I first saw it almost a year ago. And it’s been reported in various other blogs for quite some time. It’s real…

  76. John Fitzsimmons

    May 7th, 2007 at 7:52 am

    Here’s the breaking news…

    http://www.jamesyu.org/archive.....oogle.html

    Posted in March of 2006.

  77. Melanie Phung

    May 7th, 2007 at 8:21 am

    Yeah, like many of the folks have commented, this has been live off and on for months. You’d think they have the data they need by now to either run with this or drop it.

    IMO, this is hardly an improvement (incremental or otherwise).

  78. xxdesmus

    May 7th, 2007 at 8:46 am

    Ok…so my post was swallowed by tech crunch.

    I posted about this new design last night. I was searching and it magically popped up.

    http://tinyurl.com/2uqk86

    It is real, and it is ugly.

  79. Nick

    May 7th, 2007 at 9:13 am

    I think it’s really interesting that the adds only seem to appear when they are relevant.

    I search for “php” and get 2 adds.

    I search for “im speak dictionary” and get none.

    I search for “online forum software” and it looks just like the old version.

  80. Joe

    May 7th, 2007 at 10:01 am

    One thing that they possibly gain with this “new design” is that now there would be a left sidebar, which can show ads right below the links.

    –
    We Will Create Your Very Own Domain Name - http://PowerNamer.com

  81. Jesus

    May 7th, 2007 at 11:23 am

    Hi, the screenshot is true, i saw it, but that was weird for me, because that happened only with firefox, after detect that i runned spyware doctor and clean many things, and after that the results page come back as everyone know it.

  82. Gareth

    May 7th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

    I am getting it sporadically on my Google searches. The categories make sense.

  83. n2000

    May 8th, 2007 at 3:22 am

    If you use the Google search of “Scandoo” you see the new layout. I dont know if the layout ist made by Google or by Scandoo.

    Try it yourself: http://g.s.scandoo.com/search?.....raffitinet

  84. Jackson

    May 8th, 2007 at 4:43 am

    Yeah that happened to me today at school.

    Using google.com used the old layout but searching through the google toolbar took me to that layout.

    Odd.

  85. Manu Sharma

    May 8th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

    I noticed this back in October last year.
    http://orangehues.com/blog/200.....rface.html

  86. sean

    May 8th, 2007 at 4:07 pm

    I don’t like it… it’s redundant. No need for a side-bar index of additional search options already listed across the top of a page. The side-bar takes up space with useless links (because they are more efficiently placed at the top) and no content.

  87. Motorcycle Guy

    May 12th, 2007 at 3:29 pm

    I like the regular layout better, I guess its a good thing I don’t ever search for Digg.

  88. Steve

    May 14th, 2007 at 5:57 pm

    Is there a way to make it look like the old way? I have 3 computers in my home and 2 are the old style but the main one I use is the “New” layout style which I dont like. I am guessing nothing can be done on my end to make it look the old way again but I figured I would ask.

    Steve

  89. Marah Marie

    May 20th, 2007 at 10:22 pm

    “Is there a way to make it look like the old way?”

    Yes, use any Google website except the US ones…Google UK, for example, still has the old design.

  90. brian

    May 27th, 2007 at 1:51 am

    I found similar page also! Take a look at:
    http://bsjpark.blogspot.com/20.....ayout.html

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