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Comment by NathanKP | Hacker News Reader

Personally I think that the logo itself looks more professional. However those bright blue buttons are too much. The old gray buttons were more attractive.

The sidebar, however, is impeccable. The instant and available filtering options are incredibly useful.

Edit:

I just noticed something fascinating. The old Google linked from the SERP through a proxy link which redirected to the actual result. The new Google links directly from the SERP to the result. In other words you can now copy a link from the SERP and have it be the actual address of the result, not just the address of a Google redirect to the result.

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About 5 years ago, I noticed that links in my Google search results one day were being forwarded through Google before sending me off to the desired web site. I hypothesized that if I visited a search result, then clicked the back button very quickly, then visited another page in those same results, but this time didn't return to Google, that it would cause Google to think that page wasn't useful for that search query, while the second page was. Turns out I was right, because a few days later the first page moved down in the results, and the other one moved up (I had searched for an obscure mathematical concept, and my professor's page was the top result, and it had later swapped places with the second place result.) Thanks for letting me know Google still incorporates how much time a user spends visiting each search result into their formulas.

I had always theorized that they did this, but the point of what I said is that I don't think they are anymore, at least not unless they are reporting it via AJAX or something.

The links on the SERP now go directly to the source without going through the redirect. They are probably doing away with that previous system because it is too vulnerable to scamming, for example getting a bunch of people to click and then back out of the competitor's site so that way you can be on top in the search results.

Thanks. I hadn't seen this behavior for years so you have confirmed they still do it. Secondly, Google did not behave this way every time (in fact, rarely), so not noticing this in the new version doesn't mean Google no longer does this.

Heh. I disagree with you on both counts. Guess it goes to show how varying individual tastes are.

I like the blue buttons. They're very playful, which is what Google wants. I also like that they don't look like ordinary OS X buttons on the Mac anymore. They're tasteful blues, not particularly tacky. I also like the border colors of the search bar.

However, the sidebar seems cluttered to me. The design seems cramped, and I hate the whitespace between the highlighted option and the 1px blue bar on the right. Something also seems off with the top/bottom padding vs. the font size on those buttons. Overall the site feels more cramped and less quietly useful than early Google with its single row of links.

I agree with you on the logo, though. I also like where the "About 128,000,000 results (0.35 seconds)" is positioned, as well as the Advanced Search placement. So half really good, half bleh.

Perhaps it's the color. Blue buttons like that spell "microsoft" to me. I hate them.

> The old Google linked from the SERP through a proxy link which redirected to the actual result. The new Google links directly from the SERP to the result.

It is my understanding that this is always on, but for a random subset of users. If you go drastically changing your cookies (like the instructions here tell you to) you are very likely to change the state of this flag, too.

Okay, that is interesting to know. I guess I had been part of that random subset.

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