This new layout look a lot like the new web search results page. Could this be another way for google to test how people get one with navigation on the left hand side?

yeah..but wheres my "noteit" link ?? :0-

Is the "references" hyperlink in the search results new too?

You're loving the "noteit" feature aren't you /pd! :)
But yes, I completely agree.

Yeah I was looking at that Nate L. I thought it was new, but not sure. It's not on the blog search video that Philipp posted on the front page. So it's got to be newish.

The "References" link has been there for at least several weeks.

Official post here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/never-browse-outdated-posts-again.html

<< Ever since Google Blog Search launched, we've noticed that the universe of blogs has truly exploded--our index is doubling every six months. >>

In my experience, at least 50% of this is probably due to blog spam and other blogs that just re-publish (i.e. steal) content from other sites. You only need to copy and paste a sentence from a post on this blog to see how many spammers re-publish the entire post – for example:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=%22Tony+Ruscoe+stumbled+upon+a+new+Google+Blog+Search+sidebar%22

(It even seems like spammers are re-publishing other spammers feeds, which doesn't help matters!)