Has Google redesigned the header of its results page (for the worse)?
Update: They came back for me at about 8 or 9pm tonight ... So hopefully it's a glitch that's fixed - which seems to be the suggestion in this google forum (one of many): "If anyone is still experiencing this problem, Google is aware of it and they are working on it."
Maybe it's a test. But Google seems to have redesigned the header section of its results page, removing the links to other types of search (web, images, news, blogs etc) and removing the ability to sign in.
I might not be a typical user, but this seems a change for the worse for me - if you search for [keyword] and then decide you want to search just blogs or just news, there's no easy way to do it (although you can narrow it down to videos, forums or reviews in the 'show options' button, there aren't options for web, maps, news, blogs etc). See below for some other people's experiences.
The old header
The old header is still showing for Google News (and on the Google home page).
The links that showed in the old Google header
The new header
Here's how it looks now, with the links in the top left and right gone.
The links that showed in the new Google header
Update The change seems to have happened between 10pm Fri 4 Sept and 9.30am Sat 5 Sept. It's not just me seeing it - EG @rishil tweeted to say he could see (or not) the same issue.
@millerian said he couldn't see adwords either (screenshot) - and then pointed out that the links were there when he checked the google mobile site (I saw them there too).
@hugogill couldn't see the links on google.com but could on .co.uk.
While @andybeard couldn't see any links from Poland, but they appeared when he changed his geolocation in the search URL.
Yeah, what the hell?
Good to know it's not just me. I thought I had accidentally pressed a "useless interface version" shortcut key. Hopefully it's a blip at their end?
looks like a test to see better integration of universal search, or a signal for things to come...
Worst. Idea. Ever.
[...] = "http://www.searchenginechocolate.com/blog/2009/09/google-removes-top-navigation-in-serps/"; As Malcolm Coles just posted, and several others have noticed, Google removed the top horizontal menu in their search results [...]
They're reporting it on the Google help forums as a glitch.
Let's hope it is a glitch, because one of my favourite things about Google was being able to switch easily between search types. When I saw this in the morning, I went shopping for other search engines and noticed Bing doesn't let you switch across all search types as easily as Google did. If Googles doesn't fix this, I guess I'll just keep looking for a new search engine.
Its very annoying, better be a glitch
Just searching now and everything is back to how it was - thankfully
Yes, it looks like it was a bug, thankfully (see the link to a google forum that I just added at the top of this post.)