Puzzleology

The new Google layout

May 7, 2010 at 4:12 am | Posted in General | 9 Comments
Tags: Google, UI

Google launched a new layout two days ago, to something I am not a fan of and makes me seriously disappointed in Google’s design decisions. It seems Google is losing the simplicity of its user interface that has driven so many people to use it.

Let’s do a side by side comparison between the old and new Google search results, so I can explain exactly what bothers me about the new. (Click on the images for the full size)

Old layout:

New layout:

The first thing I’d like to draw attention to is the search bar itself. The old search bar, well, looked like a search bar, as most of us have come to know it. The text box is inset, indicating that we can type in it. The search button is outset, indicating we can click on it. In the new layout, the text box is actually raised due to the direction of the drop shadow, something that clashes with intuition and habit, and the search button is flattened and melded with the search bar. The whole bar looks like an image more than anything else. Additionally, compare the size of the new search bar with the search results. The search font is bigger than the font of the search results. So when I search, my eyes are naturally drawn to the search box. I don’t need to know what I searched for; I just typed it in!

Second, look at the blue bar in the old layout. Beyond containing the type of search, the “+ Show options…” toggle, and the “Results i-(i+9) of about n for [query]. ([search time] seconds)” information, it served the purpose of separating the search bar from the search results. When I wanted to look at the first result, my eyes knew to look just under the blue bar. Now, my eyes have to scan through a sea of white and similar looking text to find the first search result. Also, the “Results i-(i+9)” has mysteriously disappeared. In fact, it’s just been replaced with the page number (but only when not the first page), and in really small font. I find this information to be extraordinarily useful when I’m many pages into my search results, or when I just want to know how deep I should dig (based on the total number of results). The old positioning was great: on the right and out of the way, but bold to be quickly readable with a shift of my eyes. Now I have to strain to see that information.

All right, onto that new sidebar, which is now permanently there. I’m not a fan of the sidebar for search results to begin with. Sight naturally tends to the edges of the screen, because there are hard edges between the monitor frame and the actual screen. When I am searching for something, I don’t want to have to look to the left, and then shift my view slightly to the right before I see my searches. And again, the font has suddenly grown big. In the old sidebar (when you actually clicked on the “+ Show options…” link), the options were the same size as the description text in the searches, which is much less distracting than the large, widely spaced out options in the new sidebar. The font is just as big as the search result titles, and the options are more spaced out than the search results themselves. Plus, each option has an image next to it. This makes the sidebar more noticeable and readable than the searches. Is Google trying to give the impression that the user should pay more attention to the sidebar options than to the search results?

A few more points about the sidebar. First, when you perform the first search, the sidebar just says “Everything” and a button to show more options (see for yourself). What is the point of having the sidebar there if I have to click on a button to actually use it? Why not just hide the sidebar by default and click a button to show all the options, like in the old layout. Also, if you actually look at the top six options in the sidebar, you’ll notice that the same six options are on the top navigation bar, making it completely redundant. Finally, if Google really wants to use a sidebar, at least take a page from Bing’s book.

You’ll notice that Bing’s sidebar has a gray background at the top, creating a hard edge to distinguish the search results from the sidebar itself. Google tries to maintain it’s minimalism with a faint blue line, but the distinction is not enough and in this case it fails.

Now on to the search results themselves. This is a very subtle difference, but I think it makes a huge difference in terms of readability and usability. Compare size of the left margin for sub-results in the old layout to the new layout. The old layout has a very noticeable, (probably a half inch), margin, while the new layout margin is only two characters wide. This makes the sub-results, which are really less important and from the same site as the main result, blend in with the main results. Google once did a study that found that 30 results on a page actually resulted in fewer searches than 10 results on a page. Now it seems we’re getting 30 results on a page again, however underhandedly.

Now, Google has been showing this new layout to people for the past few months, and based on those results, I’m sure they have a reason to switch fully to this new layout. Alas, for all the Facebook layout changes I’ve disliked, I’ve grown used to every new one, and my loyalty to Google will remain, so I’ll probably grow used to this one too. And I think Google knows that. One theory is that Google is making their search results look more like ads, so users will be conditioned to read ads. Whether or not that’s true, the fact remains, they’re sacrificing usability.

Speaking of ads, I have Ad-Block Plus, so no ads showed up in my screen shots. I’d hate to see how bad it would be with ads.