From time to time you hear of Google tweaking their UI (User Interface). As they have such a large population of users it’s not often you actually get to be in one of these test groups. Below is a video of a recent test they performed, and my main google a/c was in the test. In this particular test Google remove all the surrounding links :
And once you focus your mouse on the input box to put in your search query, the other links are then shown. For this test it wasn’t every visit to google.de resulted in such a behaviour, it was more randomised.
Google UI Testing Video
Use full screen to see more details.
Google can generate valuable information from these testing sessions in the areas of usability / accessibility / user experience / conversion optimisation. What do you think of all these Google UI tests ?
Things have been extremely busy here at blackdog.ie but there are a few updates I would like to bring to the few people who read here.
The 3rd Bar Camp Cork is on next weekend, November 14th 2009. If you can make it I would really advise popping along and listening in on some of the talks (or even giving a talk yourself). Last year it was the first event of it’s kind I went to, and it was worth travelling back from Munich to attend. I met some great people and actually learned alot from it. If you want to meet some motivated online entrepreneurs and IT geniuses then this is the place to be. Sadly I can’t make it this year, but hopefully I will be there again next year.
The SEO world tends to get a bad reputation for dubious offerings, being over priced or just plain out lying. Often these companies contact clients of mine offering the sun, moon and stars. They tend to talk about special affiliations to google, and promise that they can achieve organic SEO #1 positions for competitive keywords. A while ago, fancy dress mogul Ronan O’Brien called foul over a SEO company Storm Media , and managed to grab their attention via his blog. Check out the blog post about Storm Media. This company has also been covered by other Irish bloggers like Sian Phillips
Hopefully the next update won’t be as long coming.:D
The guys and girls at google do like to have fun. Yesterday in their robots.txt file the included the following code (in fact it’s still there, but probably won’t remain there for long).
