As you may have noticed yesterday, Google has redesigned their search engine. I was a little hesitant to write about it since they have been doing quick redesigns of miscellanious things and then changing them back. About a month ago they redid the images page, but after a couple days it was back to normal. This, however looks like it’s here to stay.

The design looks much better than it was before. Everything on the page seems to have a reason for being where it is as apposed to being thrown in wherever it would fit. They’ve added a nice little bar to the top of the page with all the different sections (well not all), and a place to log in. Also the results bar looks so much better. The whole site just looks much more fresh.

Google’s redesign isn’t all about looks though. This change represents a huge move for google: universal search. This means when you search for something it won’t just give you web results. Now your going to start seeing related content at the top and bottom of the page (it seems to be dependant what your searching for). For instance, searching for Steve Jobs will give you a couple image results, your search results, and then some news results, while searching for music will give you related searches at the bottom of the page such as ‘music videos’ and ‘music charts’… it’s a huge step forward.

This change isn’t something that happened overnight and is done. Google’s blog points out that this is just the beginning and there is much more to come. I’m waiting for it, Google!