Google Tests Cleaner Search Results Page

Judging from a number of tweets this afternoon, Google is currently bucket testing a redesigned search results page with added whitespace for a cleaner look. These new pages, which are apparently being tested quite widely, only appear for a subset of users who are logged in to their Google accounts while searching. The new pages Google is testing also take away the underline from the links and present search snipped in gray text. Some users also report that instead of the traditional 10 results, some searches now only return 8 results.

Given that Google’s search results pages have become quite cluttered over the last few years as the company continued to add new features, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Google is working on giving its search results a makeover. Google, of course, always experiments with new features. This test, however, looks rather widespread (though reports are limited to the U.S. and UK for now).

Here are a few screenshots of the new layout:

google search experiment 2

google search experiment

(Image credit: Hacker News user bsuv and Twitter user Brian Behrend.