A recent discovery made on iOS and later caught on Android seems to indicate that Google is going to bring some changes to its mobile search UI. As shown in the image below – which was captured by Redditor Shadow53558 – the changes are significant, especially since they add a noticeable amount of the company’s Material Design language. They also include a few tweaks that appear to be geared at making the search experience at Google in the mobile web a much more helpful and intuitive experience. Of course, it bears mentioning that all or none of these changes could end up being finalized and implemented on the user side of things, at least until Google officially reveals the changes.
The first thing users would notice with the new design is that search results appear on cards in a way that is very similar to how Google Now is set up to look. If and when the visual overhaul does hit Android consumers, that separation should make differentiating between the results and their associated links a much easier task. Google took that concept a bit further, too, opting to show the address of the link itself at the top of each card, so that users can readily see which website the card’s information comes from. The now familiar colored dot bar appears to the right of that link, as well. Unfortunately, at this point, there is no way to verify exactly what function, if any, that will serve since it didn’t do anything at all as of this writing. The dots could provide the means some other contextual action, be used to notify the user about some specific status of the link, or could just serve as an added layer of separation between separate search results. Since the aforementioned dots don’t appear on sponsored ads, they could also simply be a more clear indication as to which results are not paid but there are any number of other things a company such as Google could use them for as well. Aside from the obvious visual changes, there also appear to be fewer paid ad results at the top of the page after a search is performed, according to the source.
For now, it looks as though the inadvertently discovered new UI may just be part of a test. With that said, it is possible that this is something that Android users will notice coming to their devices in the near future. Whatever the case, the changes seem as though they would bring quite a lot of improvement to the mobile search experience overall, in addition to bringing things more in line with Google Now results.
