Google Search Gets a Visual Refresh

Google Search: Old (on the left) and new (on the right)

Google today announced a minor design change to its core Search product that better identifies the websites that appear in results.

“As we continue our ongoing efforts to improve Search and provide a modern and helpful experience, today we’re unveiling a visual refresh of the mobile search results page to better guide you through the information available on the web,” Google’s Jamie Leach writes. “With this new design, a website’s branding can be front and center, helping you better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what you’re looking for.”

What this means, in effect, is that individual results will display the site’s icon and name above the body of the result. It’s a subtle change, as you can see in the screenshot above, as is the addition of the word “ad” in place of a site icon when the result is sponsored. But this change apparently lays the groundwork for future changes, too.

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“As we continue to make new content formats and useful actions available—from buying movie tickets to playing podcasts—this new design allows us to add more action buttons and helpful previews to search results cards, all while giving you a better sense of the web page’s content with clear attribution back to the source,” Google continues.

The visual refresh is going live first on mobile, and that will be rolling out in the next few days. From there, I assume it will be heading to the web.

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Conversation 7 comments

  • dontbe evil

    22 May, 2019 - 10:49 am

    <p>OMG that's revolutionary!!!</p>

    • karlinhigh

      Premium Member
      22 May, 2019 - 11:12 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429946">In reply to dontbe_evil:</a></em></blockquote><p>Well, I applaud Google here for the idea that changes to important navigational interfaces should be barely noticeable, instead of gigantic re-imaginings that leave even long-time users wondering where to find anything.</p>

      • MikeGalos

        22 May, 2019 - 11:56 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#429953">In reply to karlinhigh:</a></em></blockquote><p>Improvements shouldn't happen and when they have to you shouldn't know it.</p><p><br></p><p>Let's hear it for punchcards. The past, present and future of computing.</p><p><br></p>

        • karlinhigh

          Premium Member
          23 May, 2019 - 2:54 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#430108">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'll concede the punchcards. :)</p><p><br></p><p>By the way, did you write that comment on a device that has a QWERTY keyboard? There are "improved" layouts available.</p>

      • dontbe evil

        23 May, 2019 - 1:52 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#429953">In reply to karlinhigh:</a></em></blockquote><p>we didn't need a full news for this small change</p>

    • PeteB

      22 May, 2019 - 11:50 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#429946">In reply to dontbe_evil:</a></em></blockquote><p>Show us on the doll where Google touched you</p>

  • Stooks

    22 May, 2019 - 11:23 am

    <p>I switched to Bing when I move to the new Edge to see if I could live with it. I can, easily and now I have 8927 Bing points no less. At 29,000 I can pay for a year of Xbox Live.</p>

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