Google seems ready to roll out a new design for the desktop Search homepage, including the addition of Discover.
The design of the Google search engine has hardly changed in thirty years. Occasionally, Google does something quirky with its logo to highlight a current event or historical figure, but the basic design remains the same: a Google logo with a search bar underneath. Google is about to thoroughly revamp the search engine’s homepage.
A new design was shown during an event in Madrid, discovered by Search Engine Roundtable. With the addition of Discover, the Google Search homepage will become much busier. The Discover feed has been a known feature on Android phones for years, and Google now wants to bring this to desktop. In Discover, you’ll see a selection of news articles that Google thinks might interest you based on your web history.
In addition to news articles, you’ll be able to add widgets of your choice for weather forecasts and sports results, among other things. It’s still unclear when Google will roll out the renewed Search homepage. The new design has been in testing for several years.
AI search
The biggest change the Google search engine has recently undergone is not in its appearance, but in the search results. At the end of March, Google brought the notorious AI Overviews to several European countries, including Belgium. The AI-generated answers were launched by Google last year, but the feature initially behaved strangely. AI answers appear automatically in the search results and cannot be turned off.
Web administrators are not very happy with the changes Google is implementing. Google Search is an important channel for attracting website visitors, and if AI Overviews already provide the answer, there’s less incentive for users to click through to websites.