A recent post over on Search Engine Land suggests that Google will be rolling out a new search interface – or more precisely search result page design – to selected users later today.
The effort seems to have originated in the analysis of the current search results layout which is everything but coherent and has been a major point of criticism lately.
The new search results layout will use a cleaner design with a sidebar added to the left side on the page. The left sidebar will always be visible, and seems to have originated from the advanced search options which currently have to be expanded to make them visible.
The sidebar will make use of colorful icons for permanent listings at the top, and a dynamic lower part that display content depending on the choices the user made.
A selection of the video link for instance will display filters for playtime, date of publication or quality while the selection of images will display image related filters.
Google New Search Interface
The default entry point for most searches is Everything which will display the standard mixed search engine results. The Google search engine will guess the most appropriate mode, a search for Mercedes videos will therefore display the video mode as the default entry point; again with the option to switch to another mode.
It is likely that Google will roll out this new search interface to all users eventually. What’s your opinion on the matter? It will likely be another difficulty change for Google users who lately had to endure the new Google homepage design with the fading links.
Update: The search interface has changed again in recent time. You will notice that the left sidebar has been removed from Google Search, and that you find some of the options displayed on the left sidebar at the top of the search results page instead.