Google has a well defined UX (i.e. User Experience) principle and here are two items that needs special mention (for this article context, important points are highlighted)
Google’s UX Principle
Google is known for it’s UI – simple yet powerful and everything under the hood.
Simplicity is powerful.
Google doesn’t set out to create feature-rich products; our best designs include only the features that people need to accomplish their goals. Ideally, even products that require large feature sets and complex visual designs appear to be simple as well as powerful.
Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
Visually appealing images, color, and fonts are balanced against the needs for speed, scannable text, and easy navigation. Still, “simple elegance” is not the best fit for every product. – [source]
Google 2.0 – Cluttered and Lost?
Call it the Bing effect, Google is trying to bring in all sorts of media to search results without giving thought to user intent.
Take a look at this search result page for keyword ‘Ruchika’ (the Ruchika Girhotra case).
Google Real Time Search
The clean/cluttered policy goes for a ride when you stay in the srp for a few minutes.
The real time integration keeps adding to the clutter, and is probably one of the worst implementation strategy (you need to see it believe this) – a scrolling box has been embedded ‘somewhere’ in the middle of the page which is already loaded with news bytes, visuals and videos that are too distracting for the visitor.
The user intent is to find out the answer for the query, and the technology implementation shouldn’t even surface on the UI. Infact, in the effort to optimize results for other properties, organic queries are lost between the clutter and even cease to have any significant meaning.
Distracting. Ugly and a typical non-Google like implementation. Maybe a case of feature creep and a desperation to include-all and service-all-possible-user-intents.
What’s your take? Is Google search losing its mojo?
Interesting Debate here : Google launches the new homepage with Fade-in Experience [UX Dilemma]
Hello
Google need to add few things like Data, Pics, Videos, Message boards like that because those who want to search for a specific thing they can select the tabs from where they wanted the data either it might be data from WWW, images as well or videos or message boards in WWW
If this feature got added in google search then we can see a clean page with latest content that we requested
Let me know your feedback
Sai Pothuri
I agree with you to quite an extent. Google does seem to be drifting away from its own principles. Recently, the google homepage has started showing ads of Google Chrome. I guess the proverb that “you cant have the cake and eat it too” holds true for google. The competition is not a smaller one this time. Some substantial steps are being taken by Google sacrificing some of its core principles.
I agree with this post & the comments. I feel, too, that Google has made a big blunder. UI is one issue with this feature. Relevance of the results is another. There are better ways though but for that you need to invest in building some rather sophisticated technology first. I prefer to use TipTop http://FeelTipTop.com to get high-quality results from searches within social media. This search engine goes the extra step of actually reading and understanding the messages. It is not just keyword match.
Dear Shyam
Yes Feel Tip Top only works for social media. Like see what i believe is there are top search engines in different sectors in WWW. Thats what i told in my first post that google need to put up tabs because its the user who wants to get data from google and its left to him what type of data he is looking out for.
If google provide the tabs in its search engine and if it gives the user the facility to get the desired data he is looking out for. Then there is a chance for other companies to think unique and create other innovative products
Let me know what you guys think on this
Sai Pothuri
Dear Sai,
You make some very good points in your comment as well. The challenge a large company like Google faces is that some amount of greed inevitably sets in. They are no longer doing only the right things for the user but rather what will benefit their own stakeholders. Innovative start-ups like TipTop – we are starting with social media but have big plans (check out our Shopping site which lets you get a summary of quality of any product on Amazon’s site) – are more willing to take risks because we have little to lose.
I would love to continue our dialogue. Please play around with TipTop some more and send me feedback.
Thanks,
Shyam
Dear Shyam
First of all let me congratulate you on this new unique product. Right now just gone through it in shopping, travel etc etc its good need to go through it in deep soon. But the problem with the site is that it is taking time to open the page suppose in travel section i provided the destination as ” INDIA ” it almost took atleast nearly a minute to show the page on the screen.
As for my knowledge your logic covers the social media mainly twitter right now searches for the latest updates on the specific string that i provided in search bar. So it takes time mostly but if it some what a quick page show it will be better to get results soon, and better to go through them on spot
Let me know your feedback on this issue
Thanks and Regards
Sai Pothuri
Thanks, Sai. I am very surprised that it took that long for you to see any results. Please try again. From all the testing we have done, our site is as fast as any other comparable site. We usually have the results available displayed within a couple of seconds. But, based on your feedback, we will monitor the performance more closely. And, try to improve it further. Thanks. Please note that you can search for anything on the main page. Channels are only useful for comparing a number of similar things.
Dear Shyam
Wish you HAPPY NEW YEAR To your family and your team. i am going through the site now and got few suggestions to share. Can you send me your email address so that i can share few things with you
Thanks & Regards
Sai Pothuri
Dear Sai,
Thanks for your wishes. Happy New Year to you & your family, too. You can write to me at shyam AT feeltiptop.com I look forward to receiving your feedback soon.
Best,
Shyam