Google added icons to search results and now I think it's all spam

By Steven P.
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Grand Master

Steven P. Administrators

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SNAG-0001.png

 

I guess I am used to see the top results with icons that represent a sponsored or ad listing, and now all results have a sort of favicon in front of them and I am looking twice to see if it's a sponsored result Lol.

Grand Master

+InsaneNutter MVC

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I noticed yesterday Google had started displaying the sites favicon in search results, in addition to moving the URL above the page title.

 

Search results now look a total mess in my opinion, I do find it very distracting quickly glancing though the results page to now see a page of random coloured icons:

 

google-favicon.thumb.jpg.44a48f1d23b219dc4940f8db3def96a8.jpg

 

Coincidentally I had just installed the stable version of Edge, which defaulted to Bing as the search engine. The results returned by Bing are actually seem pretty good these days, i'm pretty tempted to switch over to Bing and see how that goes.

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SadJoker

Posted
Posted (edited)

Every once in awhile they change things around and test out new layouts like this. If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure I remember them testing out this exact layout before. No idea if they're actually going to make it permanent this time though... :iiam:

Grand Master

Fraud OS 11

Posted
Posted

It's not the favicons that bother me or the murking of ads vs actual results. It's the demotion of the good old URL that I'm angry about. Some extremely bad design decisions which should addressed by Google:

1. Bring back FULL URL, NOT some ridiculous breadcrumbs style. This is the open web, not Windows File Explorer. URLs are around since forever. No need to pervert them. Just present them as they are. Web browsers show URLs in the address bar and people aren't scared of them. We don't see breadcrumbs in browser address bar.
2. Bring back URL in green or prominent color
3. Move URL to 2nd row and blue page title to top row as it was.

All reasonable requests. It’s devious of them to remove the URL as it exists and present it in the perverted breadcrumbs style

 

Current design is AWFUL and it's not just a question of getting used to change. They are needlessly perverting the URL

  • +Nik Louch, waysidesc and Steven P.
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waysidesc

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, Microsoft BOB™ 10 said:

It's not the favicons that bother me or the murking of ads vs actual results. It's the demotion of the good old URL that I'm angry about. Some extremely bad design decisions which should addressed by Google:

1. Bring back FULL URL, NOT some ridiculous breadcrumbs style. This is the open web, not Windows File Explorer. URLs are around since forever. No need to pervert them. Just present them as they are. Web browsers show URLs in the address bar and people aren't scared of them. We don't see breadcrumbs in browser address bar.
2. Bring back URL in green or prominent color
3. Move URL to 2nd row and blue page title to top row as it was.

All reasonable requests. It’s devious of them to remove the URL as it exists and present it in the perverted breadcrumbs style

 

Current design is AWFUL and it's not just a question of getting used to change. They are needlessly perverting the URL

when i see favicons in search results now i always think i am seeing ads

Grand Master

Michael Scrip

Posted
Posted (edited)

I actually installed a Chrome plugin that put favicons in search results.  I like the way it looks.

 

It's easy for me to quickly see, visually, if a result is from Wikipedia or IMDB, etc.  

 

So for me... I'm already accustomed to seeing favicons.  😛

  • 11 months later...
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