“Search is such a fragile interface. It’s humbling to see how the slightest changes in design, just pixel-level changes or barely perceptible changes to colours, can have such a dramatic impact on usage and revenue. At Google, we’re in a unique position to measure the impact of design on the business, and we take advantage of that opportunity to make design decisions based on evidence.”

Data-driven culture

Au, who spent eight years at Yahoo, accepts that some people might feel threatened by the data-driven culture and perceive it to be crippling, but highlights the fact that others might see it as empowering. It’s a challenge to design something that’s as beautiful as it is lightning fast.

“One of the best things about designing for the web is that you can instantly see and measure the impact of your changes,” she says. “Google understands that designing engaging, useful and usable products with complex workflows requires something more than data.

The Secrets of Google’s Design Team

By Joe Fay

Google is finally growing up, and its eyesight is clearly going accordingly.

The search giant’s in-house poster girl Marissa Mayer told the world yesterday that the Silicon Valley powerhouse’s latest innovation was to make its search box “bigger”.

Slightly bigger deal you might say, but as Vice President, Search Products & User Experience Mayer explains, there’s so much more to this.

“Although this is a very simple idea and an even simpler change, we’re excited about it — because it symbolises our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use.”

Even more importantly, she gushes, “The new, larger Google search box features larger text when you type so you can see your query more clearly. It also uses a larger text size for the suggestions below the search box, making it easier to select one of the possible refinements.”

Link

Yahoo Dominates The Web, Just Not In Search.

the rules for search engine optimization listings and search engine marketing were not only defined but were completely controlled at the whim of this single company.

Of course, we all realize that word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing also contribute to traffic to individual websites. That said, the primary methodology for all users to reach any individual website destination is still search, of either paid or organic listings.

The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engine Marketing And SEO.