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Industry Trends

Google Search Options Panel

By May 20, 2009July 30th, 2023No Comments

A few days ago, Google announced the launch of their new Search Options Panel. This new feature will enable users to have more control over their search results, as they will be able to sort out the results with reference to time and content.

Marissa Mayer Google’s VP of Search and User Experience said that Google Search Options is an attempt to organize universal search results – including news, blogs, images and videos.

This options panel appears on the left hand side of the search results page. Apart from the content drilling which was possible on Google Search, this panel allows users to sort the results by their time frame. i.e. whether they have just been received, or came in the previous day, previous week etc.

Google has also introduced the Wonder Wheel, where the search topic is placed in a light blue circle and related words surround it. The results appear to the right of the wonder wheel, and the wonder wheel also contains similar Timeline features.

Although the new options panel looks very plain and simple, as it is blue letters on a white background, a lot of thought process has obviously gone into its designing to enable users to have clarity and ease of use so that they can save time and still find exactly what they are looking for.

Google undertook a lot of eye-tracking and usability studies to ensure that each term is located in such a way that the user finds it easily and feels totally at home with this new panel right from the start.