Google Testing Fixed Top Search Bar

Jul 18, 2011 at 9:42am ET by Barry Schwartz

Amit Banerjee has spotted a new Google test with the new top bar that places the top bar in a fixed position at the top of the screen and stays there even as you scroll down.

Amit captured a screen demo of this in action:

As you can see, the top bar stays with you as you scroll down the results. In addition, the instant previews section also was redesigned to have a more fixed look.

Alex Chitu feels that this is prepping for Google possibly launching an infinite scroll interface to the search results. Where you no longer have page numbers at the bottom of the page to go to the “next” search result page.

Google is big into testing user interfaces, so these tests should not surprise anyone. Will this stick? The early discussion around the design change does seem positive.

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: User Interface | Top News

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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http://humanwebsite.com.my Kent

This is very convenience for searches!!!! :)
http://fuzzytutorials.com/index.html Richard Gailey

About time. Hopefully they will implement it soon.
http://www.brianfosse.com brianfosse

In the case of an infinite scroll interface I’d be interested to see how they would handle PPC ads. Will more than ~8 ads appear as the user scolls down? Will advertisers have to be on the “first page” (top 8) positions for their ads to show?

While the page preview interface looks useful for organic listings, it also would block paid search listings.
http://www.gamerstube.com Joe Youngblood

Brian – they block PPC ads with the map in local search queries now. google seems to be ok with losing a few sheckles here and there if they see an improvement in user experience.
TimmyTime

“google seems to be ok with losing a few sheckles here and there if they see an improvement in user experience.”

Really? Name a quarter where they lost even e sheckle?
http://blog.performancemedia.pl Przemek Sztal

Instant Search, Instant Preview, infinite scroll..It’s all about saving time in the searching process. +1
dsf

HAHA they are copying upickle.com with the fixed search bar and “pages” free pagination.
http://way4geeks.com/ Sai Krishna

i’m struggling with this problem from so many of days . Finally i got solution . Thank you
Barry Schwartz .