New Google UI: Always-On Left Hand Facets

Google announced yesterday that is rolling out several significant changes to its search results pages. Dubbed the Jazz user interface at SearchEngineLand, this has been in experimental mode since at least Nov. 2009. See Danny's excellent and exhaustive overview which details many of the changes. Here are several of the key points and a few cosmetic changes:

• The Search options are now always displayed in the left margin
• The options are now divided into databases and search tools
  
• Click the down arrow to display more databases under "Everything" and more search options under "Show search tools"
• New "Something different" section under Search Tools links to related but different search suggestions
  
• Estimated number of results is now under the search box
• Search button is now directly attached to the search box
  
• Google logo changes and drop shadow is gone

Additional databases and search options may automatically show up for some searches. For example, in the search on 'blue' shown to the left, three other databases (books, image, & videos) display and two search options (2 months limit and sites with images). The full set of options will only be seen when the down arrow "more" links are clicked. Expand both to see all choices. The "Something different search suggestions also only show up for some searches, but they are always displayed if available underneath the search tools.

The roll out will likely take a few days as it is expanded to more and more users. Some other country and language versions of Google are also seeing the roll-out, but it may not be available for all. It will be interesting to see if it is on the left or right for languages that read right to left like Arabic and Hebrew. Some other Google databases show a similar results display (Web, Images, Videos, Shopping, Books, Blogs) while others look more like the old "Show options" left hand facets (News, Finance), and others have no left hand choices (Scholar, Groups, Directory).

What is gone or missing for now at least:

• The "View Customizations" message that could previously alert searchers to when the ranking had been changed based on previous searches, geolocation, or search history is nowhere to be seen
• Search terms used to show up after the estimated number of results
• For single word searches, the link to a dictionary definition is gone
• For country specific versions that used to offer an option under the search box to limit to pages just from that country is gone. Instead it shows up after the search in the left margin. See discussion.