Google Makes It Official: New Search Results Design Goes Live For All

A day after Google said the new look was still an experiment, it has decided that the experiment was good enough to make for an official change. Now everyone should be getting the new design.

Jon Wiley, Google’s lead design for Google Search, said on Google+, “you may have noticed that Google Search on desktop looks a little different today.” Jon is talking about Google rolling out the new design to desktop searchers.

The new design, as Jon describes it has a larger titles, the underlines were removed, and Google “evened out all the line heights.” Jon said this “improves readability and creates an overall cleaner look.”

On the ad side, Google migrated over the “new ad labels from mobile, making the multi-device experience more consistent.” Google is trying to make the mobile and desktop experience unified. Jon explained:

Improving consistency in design across platforms makes it easier for people to use Google Search across devices and it makes it easier for us to develop and ship improvements across the board.

With any change in Google’s design and layout, you hear complaints. I’d expect to hear a lot around these changes.

Here is the design comparison; the left is the new design and the right is the old design (you can click to enlarge):

For more Google experiments on their design, see our Google user interface category.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He 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.