A newer, bluer, real-time Google

Happy holidays everyone! I just wanted to make a brief return from a blogging vacation to show you a new Google search test where I’ve been randomly been assigned to the A/B test.

To summarize the main differences:

Big blue buttons for everything
Drill-down sidebar after a search
Emphasis on filtering by time – so you can get the “latest”
Search across their properties, including News, Blogs, Books, Forums, Shopping, etc.
Features I haven’t seen (except in labs?) such as Timeline, Related Searches, Wonder wheel, etc.

Really a ton of changes!

Here are the photos: First, the homepage…

And here’s a search results page after an egosurf:

Here’s the expanded sidebar:

There are lots of changes, you can check out all the screencaps below:

UPDATE: Interesting – I’m noticing that the sidebar is switching between all text vs icons + large text, on a page-by-page basis. Plus they are changing the content around by quite a bit. Seems like they are still testing the exact nature of the sidebar.

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http://logggingit.com/ Stephan Wehner

Curious stuff. I thought everything was fine the way it was.

Your last screen shot (bottom-right), http://andrewchenblog.com/wp-content/uploads/20…, says, underneath the search box,

“New results will appear below as they become available. __Pause__”

Did you see it happen ?

Stephan
http://pryingmind.blogspot.com/ Kiran

man, there are so many options. I hope they weed out the low utility ones. Cos this is just going to take the focus away from the results and towards refining and somehow interacting more with the search engine rather than focusing on getting the job at hand done.
Come on google. KISS: Keep it Simple Stupid
http://pryingmind.blogspot.com/ Kiran

Perhaps that is one of the goals here, since the quality of results has been declining over a period of time and it is getting increasingly difficult for them to provide top notch results it is in their best interests to focus on additional tools than on the results themselves
http://www.facebook.com/funcouver James Shamenski

careful on what you click on…it could determine the future of search.
taicrane

No google is always making changing. The same goes for http://www.mylifepassport.com
http://www.dearpurses.com/ dearpurses

google is the best search. i like to use it to find information.
http://www.dearpurses.com/
http://www.dearpurses.com/ dearpurses

a good color, it matches web very well. http://www.dearpurses.com/

@andrewchen