A lot of Google users might have blinked once or twice when they used the search engine. Some must have checked the zoom settings of their browsers but don't panic, Google Search just had a makeover.
Google has started testing the new look of its search results. The screaming banner ads are gone and replaced with a yellow and small "Ad" label. Other obvious changes are the larger fonts and links that are not underlined.
Just like what Facebook and Pinterest are doing, the design language for the desktop is leaning towards how websites look on smartphones and tablets. Jon Wiley, lead designer for Google search, explained that the changes on Google Search for desktop users have been experienced by mobile users earlier.
"Towards the end of last year we launched some pretty big design improvements for Search on mobile and tablet devices (mobile first! :-). Today we've carried over several of those changes to the desktop experience. This improves readability and creates an overall cleaner look. We've also brought over our new ad labels from mobile, making the multi-device experience more consistent," Wiley wrote on Google+.
"Improving consistency in design across platforms makes it easier for people to use Google Search across devices and it makes it easier for us to develop and ship improvements across the board," he added.
The large banner ads might not have attracted the clicks the company wanted and the smaller, yellow button may be a redesign in its favor. Users can easily miss the ad label and think that the first items on the search results are actually the answers to their queries. This new look (trick cough cough) is a win-win for Google but users may end up to sites that might or might not be useful to them.
Meanwhile, the underlined links have been an adoption of the format that has been the style of websites in the 1990s. The search results do not have them anymore but hover the mouse and the link will be underlined so it will be easier to distinguish from the rest of the text on one's monitor.
Will the changes be permanent? No one really knows since Google constantly experiments.
"We are always testing things. We need to experiment to improve the product. Rest assured there's a team of PhDs gathering every piece of data we can about our experiments and if it doesn't benefit users, we don't do it," Google's head of search Amit Singhal told the audience at Search Marketing Expo West.
