The biggest change to Google happened today!
Google is practically famous for its never-changing, ever-simple home page at www.Google.com.
But today they made a couple of major changes based on user research. The changes may not seem like much, but for a website this popular and with so little on the home page to start with, it is a bit of a landmark.
1. On the home page, they moved the links above the search box to the top left corner.
2. On the results page, similar links are at the top left.
Interestingly, these are considered the new “Navigational Links”. They will show even if you go to other properties such as Gmail and Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
These links were virtually invisible before. Research showed that no one used them. But now, this will probably draw more attention to all of what Google offers.
With Google growing into so many new areas besides just web search, it would make sense that they want to draw more attention to all that they do.
Popularity: 16% [?]
May 17th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Corey,
Funny you observed this too. This morning I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. If you noticed also, they added a gradient grey tone underneath the search box, probably in an effort to make the page a little more pleasing to the eyes, who knows!
Yeah, smart move in putting more of their product tabs in the drop down, more click opportunites!
I would like to see (from an E-commerce side if things) the “Products” tab as a dominent tab instead of a drop down.
Ty
May 17th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Yes, it seems as if Google has never paid much attention or worked hard on the “Products” section (aka Froogle).
The reason is probably very simple. The other shopping search engines (Shopping.com, BizRate.com, and even Ebay) spend mad money on Google AdWords and AdSense.
Enhancing and promoting “Google Products” would probably mean these advertisers would spend far les.