Try Google’s Next Design Before It Goes Live

Category internet, Web2.0, Business | Permalink | 25. April 2007

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Google’s latest design test for the search results pages and homepage is clever and has big chances of replacing the current one. The big change is that Google adds a navigation menu for its services placed at the top of the page. The list of services includes Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs (the last two are hidden under “more”). Under the search box, you’ll see links to other specialized search engines that provide useful results for that search. For “Bush”, there are many services listed, including news, news archives and blog search, but for most queries you’ll see few services listed (for “Google”, you’ll see only news search; for “flowers”, image search; for “c++”, code search, blog search and groups).

Courtesy of Webbsnack, here’s how you can test this new design.

Copy this code:

javascript:document.cookie= “PREF=ID=fddb01133a87d314:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1177334998:LM=1177334998:GM=1:S=OOg0FEVzpPplxe9J; path=/; domain=.google.com”;void(0);

go to google.com/ncr, paste it in the address bar, press enter, then search for something clever. I absolutely love the new design, but if you don’t like it, clear your Google cookie and it’ll go away.

Small observation: the number of results should be at the top of the page. I sometimes search for things on Google just to see the number of results (this is my primitive grammar checker).