New Google Design Streamlines Results “Jazz”

Last week Google released its eighth user interface redesign to the world – the search giant’s most notable overhaul since the Universal Search shake up in May 2007. This latest iteration builds upon its enhanced search options released over a year ago and draws upon an extensive user testing regimen initiated last fall.

Reportedly, Google has been testing features that were included since 2006 – and 360i’s search team has been observing such refinements in the wild for quite some time. Without getting bogged down into the fine details of the re-design, we discuss the motivations behind Google’s evolution, and underline the opportunities and ramifications they entail to marketers.

What about all that jazz?

Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, told search industry pundit Danny Sullivan, that Google’s results were too free form; she went on to describe them as “user interface jazz.” This jazz boils down to Google’s incremental enrichment of its search results with further result types (news, images, local, video, etc.) and query refinement options (time constraints, nearby, more shopping results, wonder wheel, etc.). Indeed, arch-rival search engine Bing relaunched its search engine to include a similar faceted left navigation device increasing its share of US search queries by 3.5% to 11.7% since June 2009.

Google’s search result interface is its core asset – accounting for a large part of its $23.7 billion  advertising revenue in 2009 to which the slightest pixel change is rigorously tested against. Extensive user testing, and ever more common eye tracking studies, informed hundreds of prototype interface tests. Of the experiments that did not make the cut, the Universal Bars approach stands out as uncannily similar to Bing’s current search results grouping. Instead, users now get results with a left hand navigation column of tools that allow a searcher to drill down deeper into various facets of query intent and refinement.

With its new logo and a welcome splash of colorful icons to guide users through the new options, the look surfaces options previously tucked away within Google’s “advanced search.”

Somewhat related to this latest evolution is a new feature unveiled in recent weeks, “Something Different” and “Brands for:”

These suggestions are algorithmic and not open to participation through paid media campaigns. Large brand advertisers will no doubt be a little disrupted having competitors present on brand terms (e.g: a search for Nikon reveals Olympus and Kodak) however it is arguably a step taken to offer greater consumer choice based upon the wealth of data Google has available to act upon.

Everything is the new… everything

What is crystal clear is that Google has responded to growing searcher sophistication levels, and is providing greater visibility to vertical search exploration – no doubt fueled by its Caffeine infrastructure improvements.

The result is a search interface that puts its latest innovations including real time search at searchers’ fingertips.

Important to note is that the re-design is just that — purely cosmetic, with no changes to the algorithmic determination of results have been made at this time. However, this does not mean that it is devoid of intelligence as the various facets (such as shopping, news, maps, blogs, etc.) are tailored to what results Google has knowledge of for a given query.

Meanwhile, the familiar universal results persist as the default results view (or “mode” as it is referred to internally at Google) labeled “Everything.” Ultimately, this remains the primary area of searcher click-through activity — a strategy that should ensure that the interface overhaul does not impact the core search experience as visitors connect through to brands and search results.

Opportunity in Complexity

The most fundamental change that marketers can expect from Google’s redesign is that the stream of queries reaching websites will increase in complexity, and conversely in their declared intent.

Marketers should familiarize themselves with the range of refinement options now being promoted for their mission critical keywords. Ask yourselves whether you are actively positioning optimized content or assets such as social conversations (through digital word of mouth), press releases, video, images, product feeds… to respond to the increased profile that these possible intents are being subject to.

Furthermore, marketers should take steps to embrace adding enhanced data within feeds (geo coding for Google Places, inventory levels for product feeds, image sitemaps) and content (microformats, RDF), where appropriate, to support the greater level of query refinement available to searchers.

As highlighted, Google didn’t tread lightly in testing its new search interface and its ramifications on searcher behavior are yet to be fully appreciated. Increased methods to refine search queries will add complexity but simultaneously provide marketers with greater opportunity and insight into its audience. Google’s many services and vertical search solutions will receive greater visitation, and yes… that means a greater number of opportunities to deliver its bread and butter: sponsored ads.

Finally, Google has frequently expressed its desire to move away from serving just text based links. This brighter, livelier, segmented Google may offer the search giant a future opportunity to deliver richer ads such as video and images within its search results.

- Adam Whippy, SEO Director at 360i