Young Kingdom

Google New Look, Google makeover, Tunes up search results, Flattens Logo

Google is fine-tuning the way it presents its Internet search results to make it easier for people to find information and images they want.

The new tools being introduced will be accompanied by a touched-up Google logo featuring slightly brighter hues of red, blue, green and yellow with less shadow in the background.

Google's most noticeable changes will occur to the left of its search results. That area will offer more tools for reshuffling search results into specific categories, such as news, images, blogs and video. The new alternatives also will open more doors to other possible topics of interests.

With the new look, Google is emphasizing the menu of search options that had previously been hidden on the left-side rail of the search results pages. First unveiled in May 2009, search options required a searcher to click on a "show options" link at the top of the page. Now they will be permanently affixed to the left rail, and Google will surface different search options based on whether they are relevant to the query, Wiley said.

For example, a search for "red shoes" would produce the usual set of results, but on the left rail, Google will surface a link to Google's shopping search pages. In the same vein, a search for "NFL draft" would surface news and real-time updates on that rail. Users can access the full list of search options by clicking on "more" but will see a changing list of highlighted options on the left rail for different queries.


Google said it was just time for something new.

“There is nothing wrong with the logo,” said Google product manager Nundu Janakiram. “We wanted to brighten it up and make some tweaks to it.”

Google has been criticized for this data-driven approach to design in the past, perhaps most prominently by former employee Douglas Bowman, who in departing the company last year wrote "I won't miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data."

While not responding directly to Bowman's concerns in light of the new design, Wiley pointed out that individual designers at Google have to use their intuition to figure out which kinds of visual experiments to test before subjecting those tests to data analysis. "I think that we are very lucky at Google to have the resources to be able to run the kinds of experiments that give us great data," he said.