first.

This is much better looking IMO

Unless I see it anywhere else, I'm suspecting the onebox appearing in the middle of results was a bug since I've seen it appear at the top of results all the time, and occasionally at the bottom of results. That one screenshot is the only time I've seen it in the middle, and it's always possible it was caused by a Google bug, a plugin, maybe even Photoshop :)

Has anyone else seen it appear in the middle like in the screenshot? I'm more skeptical of this because it really breaks the line between organic results and automated results, even moreso than the plusbox.

I agree with the concerns you raise, Phillip. I'm not sure news searches can be ranked within the results. It's like comparing apples to oranges. I think Google should continue keeping the apples listed separately at the top, and then rank all their oranges below.

TonyB

Niraj, this is not a bug, it's something Google aims to roll out for English Google.com. I've had Google confirm this to me, in fact they're telling me it's live for everyone – e.g. when you search for [earth day], the fourth result is supposed to be a News result. Not here though, so maybe it's still going to be rolled out, or perhaps it uses geolocation to prevent this from showing everywhere...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=earth+day

Whoops, looks like I was commenting based on a different article I had seen...Google's saying it's happening. In which case I agree with Tony's comment, it's better for them to list the automated stuff separately. If it's important/relevant enough, put it above the results and if it's not stick it at the bottom of the page. That'd be better consistency anyways, since this does not look (or function) like every other result on the page.

Philipp – The 'earth day' query has my news box showing up at the bottom of my results. I found one that shows the news box in the middle. Try 'virginia tech shooting' without the single quotes and that should generate a news box in the middle of the search results.

I'd much prefer it if they did this with Blog Search results. I always refer to Google Blog Search before I check Google News whenever I want up-to-the-minute information or a collection of opinions on something.

(BTW, when did they update the home page design and start redirecting the http://search.blogger.com website?)

Tony – That is the strangest search logo I've seen on a Google page. If you remove '?ui=blg' part of the URL it goes back to the normal looking blog search UI.

Just a Blogger skin, so that people coming from Blogger have a consistent user interface.

> (BTW, when did they update the home page
> design and start redirecting the search.blogger.com
> website?)

Didn't see that before... screenshots included for reference...

http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-blog-search-design-1.png
http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-blog-search-design-2.png
http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-blog-search-design-3.png

(The template has some bugs, like 0 padding when there's nothing found.)

I know they've always used a Blogger skin on that page, but it's not always looked like that.

Found this screenshot from Sept 2005 when Blog Search was released:

http://www.dsng.net/uploaded_images/blogsearch-755707.jpg

It looks like they just made the home page and SERPs more Google-like.

"Virginia Tech Shootings" query
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/225/473813794_cfd79349d3.jpg

I've gotten the news box to appear in the middle of the page several times now. But its strange that it always remains at the 4th spot in my results.

<<But its strange that it always remains at the 4th spot in my results.>>

It's a search result now, so it has its own rank.

Colin, so it has exactly 10 results now – 9 organic web results and 1 news cluster? Or 10 + 1?

10 results (the news box is one of them)

I'm getting 10 results like Ionut.

why am I getting mail link within my search ?? I dont see it with other screen shoots.

http://slash.pd.googlepages.com/G-UX-maillink.PNG

Yea, just look at any of the full size images at my flickr set http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustybrick/sets/72157600132958976/

Notice they show 10 results max (including the news).

So 9 organic and 1 news.

So I've seen the Google News result show up in result # 1, # 4 and #10 but none of the other result spots on the first page.

Same here Colin... 1, 4 and 10.

This is a good move for sure.

Makes a lot of sense than the annoying top box.

Great UI idea. These G guys are good.

I still can't see this. I tried proxies, data center IPs etc.

Me neither. But I thought you could see it from Romania?

>"I still can't see this. I tried proxies, data center IPs etc."

I found the solution yesterday
you can't use a parameter ="us" or ="en"
you have to use a Google account which you have claim you live in the USA

Or, finally, it works there too: http://news.google.co.uk/?q=Google&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&gl=us (.co.uk)

<< But I thought you could see it from Romania? >>

No, I only saw some screenshots.

<< You have to use a Google account which you have claim you live in the USA. >>

I tried that and it doesn't work.

I just changed my search on news.google.ie to .com while logged in and it worked

You should see this at google.com, not at news.google.com.

Oh i used TOMHTML's link and assumed the discussion had moved that way