I'm not sure I see what this graphic is meant to communicate: The green bar suggests a measure of... what, relevance? Number of hits? It's ambiguous.

I'm not too sure about this either. I don't think the green bar can be hits, since I did a search with 1,000 web hits, and three image hits, but the bars were almost exactly the same.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=EGLC,EGLC:2006-05,EGLC:en&q=

you can also get there with the above link

But this is NOT the first time this experiment has surfaced

The green bars are probably just for Aesthetic effects

neither of them does work for me: what do I do wrong.... I use ff

oh, with this here it works....

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/index.php?p=140

I think the green bars are relevance.

and if they're going to do this, they might as well do it right; float the login stuff on the right so that it doesn't waste space above the logo/input

If google is paying attention, this might actually be helpful for them. there's some good discussion on digg about this.

I personally don't like it that much, if this is how Google designed it.

Yeah, I don't see the point of having that sidebar. I don't think I'd ever do a web search for something, and then click on a different category (like Groups or Images) just because it has a high relevance. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Well done Philipp :=)

I realy like the new function. but i don't like the old school google green in the bars :D

I did a test search for something that returned Web results but no News results – even tho the News bar was showing some "relevance" (or whatever it shows), there were 0 results in Google News.

It is probably just a test to see how many people click on the links depending on the green bars.

Does anyone know how much the non-web search functionality is used among normal users? I think google wants to boost the usage of the other search-types.

I have the new google all the time when i preform a search i wrote it in my blog. http://jt0323.blogspot.com/ i used the same pic u did. anyway i also sent u an email on another google page bug that can help people get over 100 images uploaded

Wouter Schut: Check Alexa.com. Websearch is pretty dominant.

In nov. 2005 Google traffic was something like:

Google Web Search: 79.9 percent

Google Image Search: 9.2 percent

Google Mail/Gmail: 5.6 percent

Google News: 1.6 percent

Google Maps: 0.8 percent

Froogle: 0.7 percent

Google Scholar: 0.6 percent

Google Groups/Groups 2 Beta: 0.5 percent

Google Local: 0.1 percent

Google wants to use the green bar design that has been used by StockRing.com for its clients for the past 2 years. Take a look: http://www.stockring.com/sr/samples.asp However in StockRing interface the longer the green bar the better the stock or mutual fund is. This is very convenient to quickly find your weakest positions, because unlike with Google, StockRing could actually sort your stocks by the size of the green bar (of strength) to find your worst stocks quickly.

i have a question to who ever runs this blog, do u mind if i use the pic in my blog?http://jt0323.blogspot.com/ if so ill take it out

I think the "Turn OFF personalised Search" looks MUCH better by the side of the results as it is in this new design than it did before at the top.

Oo... They have brought the Search History link down as well. That should really stay at the top.

> i have a question to who ever runs this blog, do
> u mind if i use the pic in my blog?

Yes feel free to use it.

about the stockring.com bit, google has had the green bars for a long time. they're used on the toolbar to show pagerank and on the directory to show something or other.

How do you get it to go away now?
Billy

Re run the script then immediately close your browser, as per the instructions on digg. or clear your cookies.

Nice work. I believe this is significant and will help drive Google's search market share lead going forward by expanding into other search types, especially local. The pagerank is in the top left, the first place most users look on any type of web page (notice how they didn't put adwords there instead...)

I blogged about it here: http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2006/03/google_search_r.html

PREF=ID=fb7740f107311e46:
TM=1142683332:LM=1142683332:
S=fNSw6ljXTzvL3dWu;path=/;domain=.
google.com
can't get it in Canada, at least I can't

Personally, I prefer it for its better use of vertical space – i.e.
you see more results per page (or browser viewport, technically).
Most people, using landscape monitors, have more horizontal than
vertical space 'spare', especially when using Proxomitron or
something to block the ads.

With most of that new column empty, I hope they'll convert some of the other links behind "more »" to direct links (e.g. Blogs and Maps).

I've made another bookmarklet – GoogleAnon 'Special Edition' ;) – to make it easier to try, and/or to chop and change between old and new :-

http://www.imilly.com/google-cookie.htm#googleanon-se

As with the main GoogleAnon, this should work with almost all browsers and Google country domains. Tested with IE6, Opera 8+9, Firefox 1.5 and about 20 country domains.

BTW, the ZapCookie and ShowCookie bookmarklets on the same page can also be useful for testing, reverting, etc. even if you're just manually pasting in Philipp's javascript link.

Thanks Caleb!

Google Finance is a nice aggregation of financial data on one page. However, if you don't want to spend hours reading it, StockRing (http://www.stockring.com) can analyze Google Finance information for you and tell you what stocks you need to buy or sell in seconds.

By the way, recently I started to wonder if Google in fact entered a business of wasting its visitors time by duplicating a bunch of data and confusing the users with an overflow of information.

Let's say I enter "IBM" in Google Finance ... I get a page with the following:

20 numbers describing current trading activity such as recent price, gain, volume, etc.

25 numbers describing IBM financials such as revenue, profit, loss, etc.

30 numbers describing IBM competitors current stock prices

40 links to other IBM related information.

Now imagine you have a portfolio of 20 stocks and you do your research on Google Finance. Then Google Finance will provide (20+25+30)*20 = 1,500 numbers describing 20 stock portfolio. Also Google Finance will provide 40*20=800 links related to your 20 stocks. Now if you analyze your portfolio once a week Google Finance will provide for you 1500*52weeks = 78,000 numbers and 800*52weeks = 41,600 links during 1 year that will describe your 20 stocks.

Let me ask you a question ... can you really analyze Google Finance 78,000 numbers and 41,000 links in 1 year for you 20 stock portfolio? Overflow of info in Google Finance lacks much needed creativity to help people QUICKLY analyze and manage their stocks and mutual fund portfolios.

StockRing will actually analyze Google Finance information for your stocks to quickly tell you what you need to sell or buy right now.

Not sure I like it..

Or I doing something, or it doesn't work