Google changes layout of mobile Google Search pages

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Google revealed a change to its mobile search results pages yesterday that is already being rolled out to all users of the search engine.

Google Search is the world's most popular search engine and while it lags behind in some regions, it dominates most.

The design refresh of the mobile search results pages aims to better guide customers "through the information available on the web". Google notes in the announcement that the new design puts a "website's branding [..] front and center" so that customers "better understand where the information is coming from".

Site names and icons are displayed on top of the page or site title in the new design. Previously, each entry started with the page title followed by the site icon and (part of its) URL. Now, entries start with the icon and URL, and then the actual page title.

Google believes that the new design makes it easier to scan the results page. Advertisement uses the same format but instead of an icon Ad is shown in its place.

It is hard to say if that makes it harder to spot advertisement; the old design draw borders around Ad which helped distinguish it from regular content. I'd say ads blend in even better than before, and that will surely drive more clicks to them.

Depending on your query, you may get several pages worth of advertisement and other Google-powered features before the first organic search result. The company plans to put even more features and services (that it controls) on search results pages in the future.

As we continue to make new content formats and useful actions available—from buying movie tickets to playing podcasts—this new design allows us to add more action buttons and helpful previews to search results cards [..]

Google is still not honoring its quality guidelines when it comes to advertisement (which it enforces on sites), and the injection of even more Google-powered snippets will will keep Internet users even longer on Google's properties.

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