Did You Notice the New Google Results Page Sans the Sidebar?

Google has redesigned the search results page and officially announced this change on their blog earlier today. After extensive changes to its website ranking algorithms, which changed the search results, this new change transforms the way these results are displayed. The new design has only been rolled out to the U.S. version of the website and the search giant is planning on releasing this new design to all its localized web pages in a few months.

More Whitespace

Users who logged into Google this morning immediately noticed that the search results page had more whitespace and lacked the sidebar, which contained the various search options. Google reasons that this new design gives more “breathing room” to the page and places more focus on the Knowledge Graph results. The new search results page design was released a year ago for tablets and a few weeks ago for mobile phones and has now been rolled out to desktops to create a more uniform user experience across all devices. According to Google, the redesigned results page provides a consistent search experience across a range of screen sizes and resolutions.

The Changes

The new search results page is more minimalistic, with a cleaner and simpler design. The sidebar has been removed and the list of search options has been moved to the top of the search results page. As a result, the results of the Knowledge Graph are now more prominent. Till yesterday, the search options like “Web”, “Images”, “News”, etc. were placed on the left side of the results page. However, since this morning these options can be seen in a bar at the top of the screen.

The Company assures that the advanced search options haven’t been changed, only their location on the page. The advanced search and filtering options – “Anytime” and “All Results” have now been moved to the top of the page and can be accessed by clicking on the “Search Tools” button. These options to narrow down searches were earlier present on the left-hand side too. Google has welcomed all its users to give their opinions about this new design on their Google+ page.

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