It seems to be a fairly clear trend - when Google releases something, they release a whole bunch of somethings. As well as the Google+ project, they have been playing around with the way that search works, and incorporating Plus into it as well. I'll go through the changes as I see them - they may not be what you see, but that's the beauty of Google I guess. I'm using Firefox 5 and .com for this by the way, and am logged into my Google account.
The first thing that people are noticing is the black menu bar at the top of the screen.
And this stretches right across the screen:
The +Phil in the left hand corner links me to my Google+ account. And, I had to be pedantic about this, but if it's Google+, why isn't it Phil+ as well? Isn't this just another sign of Google's astonishing inability to be consistent? Furthermore, the 0 on the right hand, with the 'Share' option are also Google+ links, so why is it sensible to split up resources like that? Where is the sense?
Some people don't like the black bar, others do, and I think it's pretty much down to personal taste. I quite like it myself. The next change you'll notice is the search bar.
They have gone for a light grey approach, increased the size of the search box and removed the word 'search' and replaced it with the magnifying glass.
The left hand menu is also different:
They've taken the grey colour option and added in a red highlight for active options. What I've also noticed is that some of the search tools are beginning to come and go, such as the WonderWheel. My friend Jenny Luca tweeted to say that it had gone - I checked and it was there, and now it's disappeared for me as well. Once again, a worrying inconsistency.
Finally, the actual results display is now slightly tweaked as well.
We now have Title, URL, Cached, Summary. Gone is the 'similar' option, and I also remember that we used to get the filesize of the page as well. That's now disappeared. We're getting far less data than we've had in the past, and that's never a good thing. From a cosmetic viewpoint it's nice. From a functional viewpoint it's puzzling, and from a searchers viewpoint its a backward step. Ho hum.
Phil,
One change I noticed quite quickly was the lack of the yellow-shaded sponsored links box at the top of the results list. I'd got so used to ignoring the top couple of results and scanning down for the first one with a white background! Do you know what's happened to the sponsored links now? Are they disguised in the results list?!
George.
Posted by: Georgina Hardy | June 30, 2011 at 05:39 PM
Oh, scratch that. Ads are back - my search terms today must have been unusually un-commercial!
I don't think I like the new look from a cosmetic point of view, although I'm sure I will get used to it soon enough. I do like that you can now Copy link location from your list of results, which used to give you a pile of google rubbish before.
Posted by: Georgina Hardy | June 30, 2011 at 08:29 PM