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Google Search Page Made More Tablet Friendly

Teaser
Google rolled out an update to the context of its search results page for tablets today. Does the new skin make the most popular search page more user-friendly, or is it just cosmetic?

Google pushed out an effort to make its main search page more user-friendly for viewers accessing the page from tablet devices. The improvements should be visible to those running a device using Android 3.1 or higher, or iOS. There is nothing revolutionary about the update, but it does distill search result descriptions to the most pertinent details. It also re-sizes image thumbnails when conducting an image search so the results are more prominent and not  as cluttered.

This redesign is intended to de-clutter the search pages for tablet-users, and should hopefully result in fewer instances of hooking the wrong link when using a finger to press the desired result. We tried the new Google Search page out on a 1st generation iPad, a Motorola Xoom 3G, and an Acer Iconia A500. The latter two devices were both running Android Honeycomb 3.1, and the iPad was running iOS Version 4.3.4.

The new results did appear as advertised on the iPad using both Safari and Atomic Web Browser Lite. Readers can check out the pics attached here to get a feel for what the new search page results look like. The Iconia A500 also reflected the new look and feel of Google's search results when using the stock Android Browser. The Motorola Xoom, however, continued to render the search results page in the same way that it always has, which has an appearance much closer to Chrome on the desktop.

In the cases of both the iPad and the Iconia, we had to sign out of our Google accounts, and clear any cache in the browsers to get them to start rendering the results based on the new design. Google says that the roll-out will take place over the next few days, so right now the expectation is that the Xoom will also soon start reflecting this redesign.

The new look and feel of Google Search Results from Tablets

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Jerry Myers, 2011-08- 1 (Update: 2012-05-26)