You might not have noticed it but over the last few days, Google has been implementing a redesign for Google search results on mobile. The change isn’t big, which is why you probably missed it, but it does mark an important step for the search giant.
Can you see the change?
It is tiny, but it is there. All search results are still displayed in a separate card, much like they are on the Google app. What’s new is the branding of the site at the top of the card. Each search result now comes with the logo and name of the website hosting the search result displayed clearly at the top. This branding is only small, but it is clear. Also, whenever Google is showing an ad in your search results it will clearly state “Ad” in bold.
Working on transparency
Google’s visual refresh aims to give you more information about where your searches will take you on the web.
According to a Google blog post, the search giant is trying to help you “better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what you’re looking for.”
With the rise of disreputable information and even the gaming of certain search engines by those with a political agenda, this is an important move by Google.
When it comes down to it, search engines don’t actually offer us much information on the search results they show us. We type in our query and then they serve up the results they think answer it best.
Almost everything we see comes from the sites the search results link to. We basically click based upon headlines and descriptions that come from the sites themselves. The search results teach us very little about the sites writing those headlines and descriptions. This new move from Google is trying to address this by putting the websites’ branding at the top of each result.
As well as giving us more information about where on the web our search results will take us, Google’s mini redesign is also meant to open up new possibilities.
The blog post went on to say, “As we continue to make new content formats and useful actions available… 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 has been working hard on implementing new features to search, including buying movie tickets and streaming podcasts. This way users don’t have to leave the results page. This new design allows users to do so by providing more information about how their queries are being processed.
Wrapping up
This is just a small change, but it should have a decent effect on how we use the web. It is more important than ever these days to be able to trust the information the internet serves up. If this redesign from Google helps us do so then, we have to see it as a positive move.
