A Simple Analysis of UX & UI of Google Search: “We are the Best”
By: Adam Shaari
Tags: UX Research, UX Design, User Experience, UX, Google

Here is how I imagined the meeting of Google Search’s UI and UX team goes.

…..

Boss: We need to tell people that we are the best search engine on the internet. How do we convince people that we are the best?

Then the team start brainstorming ideas and came up with few solutions.

Boss: We also need to make people want to come back to use Google Search. So that our partners are convinced to keep funding us and our traffic is always high to have enough data for a better search engine.

Then the team has to come up with solutions while obeying the psychological principles like the Von Restorff effect, the cognitive load effect, the Hick’s Law, and the Law of Proximity.

…..

First, they identify what they want from Google Search.

Persuade users — they are the best search engine. Keep users coming back to use Google Search. Provide proper space for ads for their partners.

Then only after that, they can start working on the best ways to impress their users and make their users feel at ease and comfortable using the search engine.

The Art of Persuasion — Convincing The Users

There is no benefit of having the best technologies but no one is using them properly and understand how big their technologies are.

Google might be the best search engine out there, or they might not be one. Nevertheless, they are known to internet users as the best search engine. This means that they have succeeded in convincing people that they are the best.

Let's have a look at their page and what they did right.

The search result for “How to kill a dragon”

a) “Look at Our Capabilities”

Display of quantity of search result and how long did it take them.

Google tells users that they can retrieve a certain amount of data in a certain amount of time. A piece of information that is not required and will not help in providing a better result to the user’s searches.

However, for users with a slow internet connection, they will come to the knowledge that the slow page loading has nothing to do with Google’s ability to retrieve the results, but it has something to do with their internet connection.

Let's see how other search engines display their results.

Microsoft Bing Search

Yahoo! Search

Ecosia.org Search

Other search engines tell their users the number of results that they manage to find but not how much time it took them. Again, it is not a required piece of information, but Google did it and others are not doing it.

b) “This Is Why We Show You These Results”

They not only show you the results, but they also show you why they show you those results. They do this by bolding the keywords you typed in your search.

Google Search results

Bing search results

Yahoo! search results

Ecosia search results

It seems like 3 out of the 4 main search engines are using this technique. Highlighting the input words of users’ searches allows users to better use the site’s search engine’s algorithm. It can also provide users with the knowledge of how do they reach the answers for their searches.

Ease Users’ Mind & Easy on the Eyes

Google Search is very good at making sure that users are comfortable and relaxed while using it. They are also good at making users feel smart while using their service. These are some of the ways they manage their results to provide a better user experience.

a) “Classify Your Result”

I am not an expert on search algorithms and search engine optimization.

After search results are retrieved, it is the job of the frontend developer to show the results in a manner that is easy on the eyes of users. How do we do that?

A full page of Google Search result

Google Search classify the results to understand the thought of its users. Google is sort of talking to us like this (using the figure above as a reference):

“I know you are looking for “How to kill a dragon”, but I will tell you that some people are looking for these questions in section A, almost the same as your question. Just in case, you need it.”

“If you are looking for the book titled “How to Kill a Dragon”, this section B is for you. Maybe what you meant was this book.”

“If you are looking for a video on “How to kill a dragon” these videos in Section C might interest you. Maybe you are looking for videos of your search.”

“Now that you have come to the end of page 1, if you still cannot find the result you are looking for, maybe you would like to check the related results. Maybe you typed it wrong or something.”

Google Search is not trying to keep you on Google Search for a long time, unlike social media websites. They are not trying to make you addicted to Google Search.

They are trying to make you convinced that you have found the correct results based on your searches. That they can translate the questions on your mind and provide you with the best journey to the answers.

What about the other search engines? Are they also using this technique?

Microsoft Bing search result’s page

Yahoo! search result’s page

Ecosia search result’s page

Almost every other search engine does not only show textual search results. Ecosia is only showing videos and related searches. Yahoo! is showing videos, books, and a filter to further details you. However, in my opinion, Bing is doing better than Google search in showing users what they might need. Bing shows:-

Questions related to your search.

Books in your search’s words.

Videos related to your search.

Related searches

Preview of a Wikipedia entry on your search.

Top responses on Reddit based on your search.

A preview of WikiHow's answer.

For websites that have a numbered list of steps for an answer, Bing provides a preview of that list.

This organization and classification of answers will lay out specified paths for users to their destination, thus, providing a better user experience on that website.

b) Shorten Your Paths to the Answers

There are a lot of google searches that users made that they can get the answer after opening one or two websites on the first page.

But Google cut it shorter by showing users the answers that were provided by Google or existing websites.

Google Search result for a song’s lyrics. The lyrics is provided by Musixmatch in which you can find the lyrics by going to the website that might be available if u scroll a bit further down.

Google Search result for a movie title. Google shows the rating of the movie based on the results on those sites (i.e. IMDb, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes). Google also shows where you can watch the movie. Understanding the reasons why users searched for it.

Google Search results for Muslims prayer time. Muslims pray at a specific time of the day, five times a day. Google knows this and they provide users with a better user experience by providing them the answers straight away.

Google Search results for when you search for a company. It provides short information about the company, its online presence, and the stock price.

Google Search Result for ‘calculator’. Understanding the reasons behind why users search for ‘calculator’ online.

Google Search result for ‘protein in the chicken breast’.

The list goes on and on, making the high functionality of Google Search appeal to users as they do not have to ‘travel’ deeper than one click to find the answer.

c) They Make It Personal — Join the Exclusive Club

Some people might be overwhelmed by the high number of results from different sources and different categories. Here is how Google Search make it more user friendly.

JOB SEARCH

This is what they show you if you search for a job in a certain area.

First, they show you a glimpse of a job search portal by Google (in the red box). If you click on the header (in the blue box), it brings you to the web portal.

This portal makes your searches highly customizable and also eliminates other unrelated results such as articles on “how to get engineering jobs in Kuala Lumpur” or websites that teach you how to write a resume. It brings you to an ‘exclusive’ club that excludes other results that do not show job opportunities.

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES

This is what they show you when you search for a highly specific topic.

Google Search results for “gallium nitride led quantum efficiency

Google will show you suggestions of scholarly articles for your result. Scholarly means involving or relating to serious academic study. Google shows you this to invite you to Google Scholar in which they exclusively show scholarly articles related to your search.

Google has a finance portal, a flight schedule scanner, and a shopping portal. I am sure in the future Google will have a nearby competitions search portal, seminars, workshops, and lectures search portal, and maybe itinerary planner portals based on Google Maps and other Google features.

Key Aspects in User Experience

After reading about all the principles and theories on design thinking, usability, and user psychology, the most important thing to remember is to have empathy.

Put yourself in the shoes of all your millions of users. Try to understand how they would feel while using your website.

A friend of mine gave me advice, “A good UI and UX designer has to have the right amount of empathy and selfishness. You want to make users comfortable and happy, but you also want things to go your way and your way only.”