I've been looking and looking and I can't find any matches to the way that Google just started formatting my search results a little bit ago (30 minutes).

Most searches put the # of pages returned all the way to the left, then display a white box on the right with relevant images/video/blogs/news searches and related search terms.

Screenshot here:

http://www.ramblewords.com/2007/05/09/new-google-results-formatting/

Let me know if I'm crazy, but I'm pretty sure it's new. Either way, I kind of like it so far.

Interesting layout there. I wonder why I never get any of these layouts in my searches.

No its not that new. I have seen it here before.

James is right. There have been a couple of threads about this before.

I wish Google would name / number these interfaces so that people could refer them with some consistency. It's not easy for the average user to get the PREF ID from their cookie and post it for every new interface that's spotted!

When Google tests a new interface like this one on a subset of users, what metric do you think they use to evaluate it?

Percentage of successful searches, as measured by an eventual click on a search result? Something else?

I figured as much, but didn't find anything.

BTW, PREF ID on this one is d1f4af250b3e1c65 as far as I can tell.