Google has a brand new interface from today.

The new face of search and advertising giant went live this evening in UK and most of the world. Major changes to the interface focused on user experience and easier search management. The New Google Interface has been designed to greatly reduce time that average user spends before reaching relevant content they’ve been looking for.

Google with its conservative look and text based navigation seems to be going towards more colourful interface incorporating icons. For now hidden under “more” accordion above which only recently used items are showed.

The new functions within New Google Interface are giving users much more power to influence (filter) search results. For example in Everything search now you get functions to reduce shopping results. This is very handy as searches for many terms were getting over commercialized and it was extremely time consuming to find what you were looking for if you did not wish to shop for things.

Also a few other features that should  minimize “junk” results allowing you to narrow down your searches though making it more efficient.  That should also reduce load on Google’s servers and what comes with it reduce running costs.

Google Face lift.

Google logo has got new slightly toned down colours and improved “3D” look with soft shadow; search button integrated with input field and other small details like fonts and colours that give slightly softer and a bit more “modern” look.

New Google Search interface features

Left hand side bar with additional tools to filter your search results allowing you to pin point the data you are looking (in theory)

The new Google Search Sidebar Navigation

Google New Everything Search

This option presents unfiltered global results for the your search query giving you pretty much similar results as with previous interface  – everything in one big bucket of results. However you have more handy filters on you left hand side menu to use and at the end of the results’ page you can find searches related to your query, nicely standing out. You can find some very handy filters like

Google Everything Search Sidebar Navigation includes:

• Search localization
  • The Web (generic search – according to your language)
  • Pages from your country (in our case UK)
• Search by time of publication
  • Any time
  • Past 10 minutes
  • Past hour
  • Past 24 hours
  • Past week
  • Past month
  • Past year
  • Custom range
• View
  • Standard view
  • Related searches (displays suggestions of related searches)
  • Wonder wheel (pretty much like related searches but with visually presented relations clusters showing clearly the history your of your related searches and allowing you to go back and forth)
    

    Google Wonder wheel

  • Timeline (shows relation between a year and your search. In general it includes all content (texts) that are dated and contain your search term. All reflected in numbers on the timeline diagram above search results. Yet another excellent tool for researchers)
    

    Google Timline Search

• Results filtering
  • Standard results
  • Sites with images (results combined with image search per website)
  • Fewer shopping sites (this is what I needed)
  • More shopping sites
  • Page previews (good but not as good as SearchPreview for firefox)
  • Translated search (Now you can search for your term in translated content so you are not restricted to one language only)

• Reset tools (available only when you have applied any of above filters)

Google New Books Search

Here you’ll find every book on Google Books related to your search. Excellent toll for research has found its place in the handy Google Search sidebar so you don’t have to search it in your bookmarks anymore.

Google Books Search Sidebar Navigation includes:

• Browse Books (window shopping catalogue)
• Search localization
  • The Web (generic search)
  • Pages from your country (in our case UK)
• By view availability
  • Any View
  • Preview and full view
  • Full  view
• By Document type
  • Any document
  • Books
  • Magazines
• View
  • List view
  • Grid view
• By age of publication
  • Any time
  • 19^th century
  • 20^th century
  • Custom range…
• Sorted by
  • Sorted by relevance
  • Sorted by date
• Reset tools (available only when you have applied any of above filters)

Google New Blogs Search

This filter allows you exactly what it says on the tin. One click and you are narrowing your search results only to blog posts. There is another tool for searching blogs but this time only comments posted under an article (read about it further down the page).

Blog Search Options include:

• Search localization
  • The Web (generic search – within your language – for blogs)
  • Pages from your country (in our case UK)
• Search by age of publication
  • Any time
  • Past 10 minutes
  • Past hour
  • Past 24 hours
  • Past week
  • Past month
  • Past year
  • Custom range….
• Sorted by
  • Sorted by relevance
  • Sorted by date
  • Reset tools (available only when you have applied any of above filters)

Google New Images Search

This excellent search tools has been greatly improved over the last two years. Now in between many offering you filter types like: “Face; Photo; Clip art; Line drawing”. You are probably already familiar with colour picker. Now, all this within easy reach in the Google Search Sidebar Navigation.

Google Image Search Sidebar Navigation includes:

• Search by size
  • Any size
  • Medium
  • Large
  • Icon
  • Larger than…
  • Exactly…
• Search by type
  • Any type
  • Face
  • Photo
  • Clip art
  • Line drawing
• Search by color
  • Any color
  • Full color
  • Black and white
  • Colour picker

Google New Video Search

It seems like Google Video does not exist (as we know it) anymore – at least not under the old address http://video.google.co.uk/. The search for videos has been unified with other searches in terms of layout an appearance. There will be no more separate Google Video interface for searches. However you still can get to the standard Google Video once you click a video in you searches but this time it has to be a video hosed with Google Video and not from other services. Videos from other services are now displayed on directly on the pages they are hosted on.

Google Video Search Sidebar Navigation includes:

• Search localization
  • The web
  • Pages from the UK
• Video duration
  • Any duration
  • Short (0–4 min.)
  • Medium (4–20 min.)
  • Long (20+ min.)
  • Video Age
  • Any time
  • Past hour
  • Past 24 hours
  • Past week
  • Past month
  • Past year
  • Custom range…
• Sorted by
  • Sorted by relevance
  • Sorted by date
• Video Quality
  • Any quality
  • High quality
• Captions
  • All videos
  • Closed captioned
• Sources
  • Any source
  • youtube.com
  • google.com
  • discovery.com
  • dailymotion.com (etc.. Sources depend on availability of search related videos)

New Google News Search

This of course allows you to see all the latest news on a topic you are interested in. Not many significant changes took place here apart from news grouping. Now you can see the results of you search as a top stories related to your search. Each story or news (if you prefer) leads you to the articles related to this particular story.  The same grouping rules apply to news stories in images and blog posts within Google News Search.

Google News Search Sidebar Navigation includes:

• Top Stories
• Search localization
  • The Web (generic search – according to your language)
  • Pages from your country (in our case UK)
• News type
  • Images (shows story grouped images)
  • Blogs (shows story grouped blog posts)
• Video Age
  • Any time
  • Past hour
  • Past 24 hours
  • Past week
  • Past month
• Sorted by
  • Sorted by relevance
  • Sorted by date

Google Updates Search

Brand new search earlier tested in old news results. Now, you can use the real time combined content search from social networks like Google Buzz, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many more. This is a perfect tool for Instant Bloggers or Internet Marketers. Search results display never-ending list of live internet buzz related to the term you have searched for. The list is extended with new tweets, posts etc. every few seconds. If you want to know what’s hot or what’s coming then this is the place to check.

Google Books Search Sidebar Navigation includes:

• Search localization
  • The Web (generic search – according to your language)
  • Pages from your country (in our case UK)
• Age of news
  • Any time
  • Latest

Google Discussion Search

This search option focuses on forums, groups, blog comments and other content that could be contained under this definition. Discussion search is another handy extension especially if you are looking for solution to a problem you may have for instance with your computer or OS. This tool will definitely help you to efficiently search for solution (if it already exists) thanks to search options like Q&As or Forums. Here again you’ll find search results grouped according to your search and topics.

Google News Search Sidebar Navigation includes:

• Search localization
  • The Web (generic search – according to your language)
  • Pages from your country (in our case UK) Video Age
• Age
  • Any time
  • Past hour
  • Past 24 hour
  • Past week
  • Past month
  • Past year
  • Custom range…
• Sorted by
  • Sorted by relevance
  • Sorted by date
• Length of discussion (how many replies)
  • Short
  • Medium
  • Long
• Type of results
  • Standard results
  • Pages with images
  • Page previews

Google Maps Search

So far I haven’t noticed any significant changes to the Google Map Search interface. Did you?

Mysterious Google icons

It is worth mentioning that there are two icons in Google’s set for new interface that have not been used and remain a mystery at least in the UK. If you know what those icons are going to be used for then please post.

1. Tag icon – Now this one is the new aicon for product search. Not yet in the side menu.
2. Question mark icon

If you know anything that I have missed out here please share here I will update the article with your findings. Or if you think something is not right please post a comment and I’ll review and correct with credits.

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