Solaera Web Design -- Maryland Web Design for Small Businesses

So apparently this is my new “Reviews of Things Google Has Made Recently” series, but it’s a topic that I’ve seen bandied about here and there and I’d like to take a crack at it, in the spirit of “You learn by paying attention to how others approach problems.”

Google (as presumably the entire free world knows by now, since it’s roughly impossible to *not* end up on Google at least once per twenty-four hour timespan) recently unveiled a redesign of their search engine page; it’s not a mind-bogglingly intense one, in the sense that google is still a primarily white page with a bunch of blue links on it, which is actually probably a good thing. It would have been a shame to see them take a leaf from the Facebook School of Website Redesign and put everything in a completely different place for no particular reason.

However, the changes are enough to subtly alter the feel of the site, and it’s been interesting reading over the various discussions that have cropped up here and there about them. Here’s my thoughts on a few random aspects which have so far caught my attention.

– The front page. There’s a new logo, obviously; same general idea as before but the drop-shadow has been scaled back and the colors are slightly adjusted. From a design standpoint, I personally find it not quite as eyecatching, but it does serve to give the page a more bright, sharp-edged look which I do like a lot and which is continued in its search pages, and given Google’s already pretty intense brand recognition, this is probably not a huge deal for them one way or the other anyway.

I am, however, a little perplexed by the little fade-in doohickey the front page has going on, where it opens as an entirely blank screen other than the logo and search box, and any move of the mouse brings the other type and menu options into view. It’s a cool effect, but it’s not mimicked by any functionality anywhere else in the site (the menus slide down, of course, but only when asked to) and I personally found it quite distracting the first time I used the new site, to the point where I actually paused in my searching for two minutes to figure out what had changed. On subsequent usages, I found it mostly annoying; if I want the front page options, I tend to just want them there and not have to wait for them, and if I don’t, the effect serves to call my attention away from the main point of the page. It’s a small usability issue in the grand scheme, of course, but I found it rather strange.

– Search results. In addition to mild visual changes which for the most part maintain Google’s extremely minimalist style, the results page has its most major update in the left hand nav bar, which includes an array of options for narrowing down and refining your search options, including content categories, related searches, time posted, and a variety of specifications.

I will say — I do feel that the sidebar is a bit more easy to navigate than it used to be, and is more eyecatching to make sure that the user knows their options. I’ll be honest, I was going to comment on “Oh, they have the related searches in a side nav now rather than at the bottom,” and it was only when I looked at a comparative image that I realized it had in fact been there all along and I hadn’t noticed.

The “Something Different” feature, which shows searches with related subject matter but not necessarily related wording, is very nice and I can see how it might be useful on occasion (as well as entertaining when it sometimes provides results that have less to do with your original query). I’m a little puzzled by the enthusiastically-titled “Wonder Wheel” option, a strange animated mind-map that I cannot possibly imagine having a need for except as a Wikipedia-esque this-connects-to-this-connects-to-this timewaster. It falls into the same category as the front-page animation in that I’m a little surprised at the gimmicky aspects that seem to have been tossed into the design on the latest go-round.

This is, of course, nitpicking. The functionality of Google is, of course, as good as it ever was, and since they basically own the entire internet, they can probably get away with a bit of gimmickery here and there, especially since, as mentioned above, they’ve kept their style, for the most part, extremely consistent, and cleaned up, sharpened, and brightened their visual aspects a bit. The general response on the blogosphere seems to be positive as well, or at least what I’ve read so far. All in all, a thumbs up from me.