Google’s New Layout: Shocking & Horrible?
Friday, May 14th, 2010Last week, Google launched a new results page layout, giving searchers a variety of options to the left of the search results. The changes are primarily to the layout and styling and are intended to provide an even richer search experience for users. While the search options panel has been available since 2009, this is the first time Google included it in the default view for all users.
While the changes seem minor, many feel that the changes go against Google’s simple way of presenting information. Some posts in Google’s forum describe it as “shocking and horrible”. Google has stated that the new layout is still a work in progress.
We polled our team to see if the new layout is useful for searches and the team was pretty split. I guess time will tell…
Update: We encourage you to check out the full Google Latest Results Page POV prepared by Steve Rose and Sam Hailstone, SEO Engineers from the Razorfish UK Office!