Googling Google

Christopher Dawson, Sam Diaz and Matt Weinberger

Test out the new result pages for Google

By Garett Rogers | September 22, 2006, 5:27pm PDT

Would you like to try the newest UI test from Google for their search result pages? Screenshots of the new design have been making their rounds for a while, but now we can finally test it ourselves.

[image from Googlefied]

Haochi at Googlefied has the "magic cookies" that will transform the look of your result pages. Paste this string it into your address bar while on google.com and refresh the page (please remove all spaces, they were added for formatting purposes).

javascript:alert(document.cookie= "PREF=ID=ad93daafaa747f70:TM=1158373640: LM=1158374016:GM=1:S=wNuiLiKHrkRnMZtf;path=/; domain=.google.com")

Philipp Lenssen isn’t sure he likes the design, and I’m going to have to agree with him. There is just something about it that makes me wonder if there is a better way to do it.

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Garett Rogers has always had a deep interest in computers and the Internet, which led him to a degree in Computer Information Systems. He is currently employed as a programmer for iQmetrix.

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Not too keen on the design either

I've been seeing this design for a while, I guess I must have ended up as one of their random testers. At first I thought there was something wrong, but I wasn't able to find a way to restore it to normal.

I have to admit, I don't like it. Firstly, I like the results to reach to the left side of the page. The bar down the left side is simply... well... useless. It wastes space, isn't very interesting to me, and would be better suited uniformly at the top of the page like on the other google pages, rather than 5 lines at the side then wasted space. There's no reason it needs such a prime position.

It removes the consistency between pages too - peopple are used to the different search links being at the top, like they are on the main page. Why then move them to the left when you do a search?

Additionally, the layout doesn't fit together very well. The bar at the top is now grey, rather than the nice blue bar there currently is, and the blue line down the side of the left bar looks wrong.

For once, I think this is a bad decision by Google - I wish there was a way to be able to turn it off once they force it on us. I just hope it isn't the start of things to come (eg. putting nice tall flash/graphical ads to fill up the wasted space on the left)

I loved Google because it used to be clean, now they're starting to make it messy, and I have to admit, I'm not too keen on that.
Kaleld
23rd Sep 2006
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Strange

that this script would be posted without at the same time posting a device that allows those who after testing find that they don't care for the new layout to get back to the old one. Until that is done, I'll pass....
mhenriday
23rd Sep 2006
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Reversing the change

I too was wondering the same thing after trying - however, it's quite simple if you want to go back. Simply remove the google.com cookie with the data entered in. If that's too difficult, just remove all your google.com cookies, only takes a relogin to get them back. (I used the Web Developer Toolbar in Firefox to remove all google.com cookies). Reverses the change easily

Hope this helps
Kaleld
23rd Sep 2006
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