Commentary

Google Introduces A New Look For Mobile Search

Google on Wednesday unveiled a new look for mobile search results that gives publishers a way for their content to stand out.

The changes to the mobile search results page aim to better guide users through the information available on the web, Jamie Leach, senior interaction designer of search, wrote in a blog post.

“With this new design, a website’s branding can be front and center, helping you better understand where the information is coming from and which pages have what you’re looking for,” Leach wrote.  

The name of the website and its icon serves up at the top of the results card to help anchor each query result. If the site has an icon or favicon, it can appear in the search results. Leach links to instructions on how to include it.

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Google will look for and update the icon whenever the bot crawls the company’s home page. Whenever changes are made to the icon, webmasters or marketers of the site can inform Google and request re-indexing of the site’s home page. Updates can take a few days or longer to appear in search results.

The redesign also impacts how search ads appear. Now there is a bold “Ad” label next to the web address link of the sponsored content or advertisement at the top of the page rather than under the headline, which is intended to help people quickly identify an ad.

The new design will help companies and Google prepare for the changes in search that are ahead — from buying movie tickets to playing podcasts — as it enables the company to add more action buttons and previews to the search result cards, while attributing the content to the source.

This redesign will initially roll out in mobile within the next few days. Marketers can expect more changes soon.

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