While they’ve been selectively displaying them for a little while now, Google today took the time to talk about and show off its new search ads. The general gist? Bigger, bigger, click me, bigger. Or, in Google’s own words, “Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information.”

That can be true, I suppose, but each of these additions also make the ads units significantly bigger, and as such, much more in-your-face. More often than not, that doesn’t equal a better experience for the user. Of course, Google’s unstated hope is that you’ll be more likely to click on these bigger ads, especially now that many contain visuals. → Read More

It’s mildly annoying when I’m searching for something specific and Google returns results that are led by a huge overview page like the ones found on Wikipedia. I usually just use the Cached option to locate the information that I’m looking for, since that highlights the keywords in the resulting page. But now Google has a better option.

A new feature in Google Search results lets you jump right to a specific area on a page. For example, if you’re looking for “good cholesterol level,” Google’s first result is a page entitled “What Your Cholesterol Levels Mean.” The good cholesterol level is a part of that, but further down the page. But now in Google’s results, you will find a “Jump to Your HDL (good) cholesterol level” directly underneath the main result. Clicking on it will take you right to that section on the page. → Read More

Google is continually updating its search experience via the algorithms and the way results are displayed. But when it comes to the search box itself, it has largely left it alone. Sure, it has added drop downs for suggested results, but the box itself has stayed a thin input field. But now it looks like Google may be thinking about a change.

Today, while using the Safari browser, we noticed that the search box has been made bigger, and the buttons made square. We’re not the only ones who have noticed the change. It may seem like a trivial update, but remember, this is Google, millions of people use it every day to do searches, and a UI change, however small, is not trivial. → Read More

Different markets have different needs for marketing products or services. We all know that much. But that doesn’t take away the weirdness of a company like Google advertising its core product (online search) by using ink that was printed on paper.

Guilty of this hideous crime (I kid, I kid) is Google India, who apparently ordered some targeted quarter-page advertisements to appear in a variety of city supplements of The Times Of India, the leading English-language daily newspaper in the country. → Read More

Suggesting queries is becoming a pretty standard practice on search engines these days. You know, those drop-down menus that are populated as you type with things you likely mean. They’re useful, but Google just made them more useful.

Previously, when you types a query into Google’s search box, the menu would drop down giving you a range of possible search terms and how many results each would return if you select that one. Clicking on any of those would take you to a results page. Starting today, when you start typing in the search box, the suggest drop down is populated with a number of interesting things including direct links to pages, personalized results and even sponsored ads. → Read More