Google's 8th revision is to stand for a meeting every day

Even a few pixel changes could affect Google's profits, but why is Google willing to overhaul the most successful product in the history of the Internet? The web has been changing, evolving and innovating, "Mayer said," Even for Google, which people use every day and are already very familiar with the site, the revision is also very important. ”

8th Time Revision

Every day 268 million people use Google to search for information. Every time a user enters a search request, Google's software gives the most relevant links. Although the background operation is very complex, but the entire query process is very simple, it is no wonder that users will ignore many processes. So who is going to focus on each of these elements?

Although attempts have been made in areas such as maps, books, e-mails and social networks, Google's empire is still based on search. Of the company's $23.7 billion trillion income in 2009, 97% came from advertising. While Google has not disclosed revenue data for individual advertising products such as AdWords and AdSense, several insiders acknowledge that Google relies on "sponsored links" to search results as much as oil countries rely on wells.

While providing search results, Google will also provide some advertising links on the right side of the page. Since the birth of 1998, Google search page has undergone 7 minor revisions. The most recent was in May 2007, when Google added images and video content to its universal search. May 5, 2010, Google for the 8th time revision, with Google search products and user experience Vice President Marissa Mayer takes (Marissa Mayer), said the revision of the "range is very large, and particularly important."

Google has long had the leading search technology, but it is hard to find. The goal of the 8th revision is to highlight these advantages and integrate them into the main results page. Users can now use additional toolbars to further exploit the information. That is, a user can quickly filter a search request after submitting it. For example, you can only display information from a shopping site, or you can display only a video of a topic, or the latest news story. After adding new logos and a series of colored icons to the left of the search results page, users can get a lot of new options, and the entire page looks a lot different than it used to be.

Revision power source

Even a few pixel changes could affect Google's profits, but why is Google willing to overhaul the most successful product in the history of the Internet? The web has been changing, evolving and innovating, "Mayer said," Even for Google, which people use every day and are already very familiar with the site, the revision is also very important. ”

The revision is not just a look. Over the past few years, the development of Microsoft's Bing and social media such as Facebook and Twitter have proven that Google's search for Web pages based on overall relevance is outdated. Last December, Google acknowledged this and said it would begin real-time indexing of the network to help users organize social media information.

Some in the industry have questioned the complexity of this approach. "Advanced search has almost never worked," said Jacob Bu Nielsen, chief analyst at US market research firm Norman Nielsen, Jakob Nielsen. "People don't want to use search engines." They want to leave the search engine. That's why they get the best results-users want to leave the search engine, so they might run to advertisers. "In other words, Google has been successful because it has never tried to constrain users with a variety of experiences."

However, the pattern of competition is changing. This March, Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited site in the U.S., and Microsoft launched its own plan for Bing. Although Bing is third in the U.S. search engine market and has a big gap with Google, it is trying to develop areas such as tourism and shopping. Bing has recently introduced a design that adjusts the search interface to suit the needs of users. If the user is obviously looking for a ticket to buy information, Bing will become a travel search. "This is completely different from the current mainstream approach based on links," said Bing's director Stephen Witz Stefan Weitz. It is not reasonable to provide the same user experience for each search request. If you just want to book a ticket or inquire about a flight, why do you want to show so many links? This is illogical. ”

Every time Google's revision makes its algorithm more complex, but has maintained a concise interface. Andy Miedler, an analyst at US investment bank Edward Jones, said: "Google has been innovating and Andy Midler products, but has always adhered to the principle of simplicity." People are becoming more and more fond of Google's simplicity. "The previous revision is a trade-off between simplicity and complexity, and it can boost Google's profitability every time."

Initial preparatory work

Businessweek was allowed to interview 16 employees of the Google design team in March this year, when the company was fixing loopholes to prepare for the revision, a process that requires the close collaboration of the artist and programmer. This work is stressful because it needs to be integrated into a new decentralized, socially-networked network while continuing to promote search advertising. However, the atmosphere of the whole team was relaxed. Nudu Jannaki, Google's product manager, is a key figure in coordinating engineering and design team members, who said: "The project is very important." Everyone is focused on the search engine, which is the bond of the whole company. We must do it well. ”

Although the configuration, speed, browser and screen size are all different, but Google each page must be perfect compatible with the various types of computers. It also has to be optimized to provide users with the fastest possible search and click speed. These technical requirements alone are enough to make designers mad. So when the team was commissioned to launch the search Results V8 project in 2009, they decided not to consider these requirements.

24-Year-old Stanford graduate Jannaki Lamb, 34-year-old Network designer Joen Willie (Jon Wiley) and two visual designers have designed a total of hundreds of different pages for users to display search results. Jannaki Lamb said, "We have done everything we can think of." "In these slabs, the navigation tool is shifted from the left side of the screen to the right, and the color is changed from Google's traditional blue light to a more lively color." Not only changed the link style, but also flipped the module. One plate fills each pixel of the page with information, and a design adds a display ad.

This unrestrained creative phase can make the idea clearer, but its role is largely limited to that. When designers and engineers come together into more macroscopic areas and begin to think carefully about new layouts, the urgency of making revisions to the world's most lucrative web pages cannot be suppressed. "We want to focus on a revolutionary model through which we can both attract users and give them a completely different experience," said Willie Texas, the governor of Rick Perry, who was in charge of Perry's website and joined Google in November 2006. "Engineers are trying to look at themselves as a promoter of reform, not as a conservative person." "Sometimes a designer tells you what they want, and you tell them that you can do 90% of the job with One-fourth of the work," said Nate Gaylinn, the Natte Guelin's technical director. If it's really worth doing to get a good user experience, then you need to do some extra work. But if it's some trivial detail, we'll do it in simpler ways. ”

I have to stand and meet every day.

A standing meeting is held at 4:07 every day, with about 10 participants, most of which are decided by the full discussion at these meetings. Google co-founder Saigi Brind (Sergey Brin) estimates that it takes 7 minutes to walk through the Google headquarters campus, so Google now has a tradition: the interval between meetings is 7 minutes. Everyone involved in the project stood up for meetings to ensure that no one would feel too comfortable and avoid wasting time.

Jannaki Lamb fastened a keyboard to the back of the chair so that he could keep a record while he was meeting. Gaylin said: "The purpose of the regular meeting is to discuss everyone's working status." If there is duplication of work between the two, it can be found and coordinated to avoid duplication. "Each committed feature goes into the user interface audit phase, which is the responsibility of a larger search team to ensure that these features do not adversely affect the search engine infrastructure." "They'll make sure we don't mess up," Gaylin said. ”

Careful testing.

By October 2009, the team had launched its first functional prototype product, and all 20,000 Google employees could test it. Internal employees can submit vulnerabilities or comment on the design. Google did not disclose the number of people involved in the tests, nor did it disclose staff comments. Jannaki said the team received a feedback every 10 seconds during the rush hour, but not all of the information was useful. Even Google's employees have made sharp criticisms of the design, he said.

The search button became one of the first messages of feedback, and the designer changed the button to blue. "There are a lot of people telling us that they find this button distracting," Jannaki said. They usually search by return key, and this button shifts the focus from the search results to the search box. ”

In addition to internal testing, Google's developers have also passed 19 hours of eye-tracking tests to study various aspects of the new design. The eye-track test began in the early 20th century, when the eye movement was tracked by an instrument fixed to the eye. Now it is possible to test the trajectory of the eye by a camera built into a computer screen, which helps researchers understand the area they are actually observing when they browse the Web. Users usually browse the first two lines of the Web page and then navigate vertically to the left of the screen, which is called "F-shape."

In the eye-track test, engineers and designers sat in a nearby room and observed the tester's behavior through a one-way, transparent glass mirror. Each person involved in the test is assigned a search task, so that the Google team can observe the actual performance of the page. During Businessweek's visit to Google, a participant was asked to enter a situation in which his niece was writing a report on Michael Jackson and he needed to help his niece find specific information. When the user, like other internal testers, is distracted by the blue search button, it means that an idea is discarded. In other instances, eye-tracking data can also help designers make choices between different colors and panel sizes.

While engineers and designers value eye-tracking results, statisticians have tested only tens of thousands of real-world users in a few months ' time. With 268 million users per day, Google can launch a new product for a small number of users, but still be able to get large enough samples. Google wants to bring more search and clicks to its sponsored links, and any slowing or blocking of the process will have an impact on Google's profits.

In the final stages of the revision, the statisticians focused on the slightly increased spacing between the Google search box and the first search results. "No one will notice that it takes an average of dozens of milliseconds to click the search results," said Patrick Riley, a software engineer at Google, "but we have to be careful if all users spend dozens of milliseconds Patrick Railly." "The analysis was fed back to the designers and then adjusted. Jannaki said: "We combine quantitative and qualitative feedback with our own feelings and redesign." ”

The design concept is challenged

Valuing technical indicators is an important part of Google's culture. Google's two co-founder, Brin and Larry Page, are engineers, who have long argued that appearances must succumb to performance. Paige now feels that the home page no longer needs other elements other than a search box. But that doesn't mean designers will succumb to the idea. Google's first visual designer, Douglas Bowman (Douglas Bowman), resigned in March 2009. At Google, the data "became the backbone of all decisions, restricting Google from making any bold design decisions," Bowman said in an article published in Stopdesign.com. He also noted that because the team was unable to choose between the two blues, 41 different shades were tested, resulting in the postponement of a project. He wrote: "We've also had a quarrel recently about whether the font should be bold 3 pixels, 4 pixels or 5 pixels, and they asked me to prove my choice." Bowman now serves as the Twitter creative director.

Other prominent designers who have worked at Google admit that too much emphasis on data can be annoying. Jeffrey Wien, Jeffrey Veen, who joined Google as Google's design director in 2006, said: "The designers I have worked with are great, but they are usually trained in human-computer interaction and lack of aesthetic attainment." That's what makes Google's design a reality. I want to recruit people who can't be hired by Google because they lack the background in computer science. "Wayne had left Google in 2008.

But Mayer does not agree with this criticism. "We don't suppress intuition at all," she said. "We need to use intuition to drive innovation and bring great design to Google." What we can do is to use the power of the Internet and its measurable characteristics to find scientific ways to judge the pros and cons of creativity. "As chief architect of the search Results V8 project, Willie believes he is satisfied with the mission and understands that the search design is not intended to surprise users." "It's like lighting or sound design in a movie," he said, "If you go to the movies and say, ' That's a great sound design! ' I'm afraid it's a problem ... I don't want someone to say, ' Look, how beautiful the search page is! ' I want people to say ' what I want ... Where is it? ' Then click on it and then leave. ”

The revision is still continuing

In the new version of the page before the revision is still continuing, some also very important, the release date has been postponed 5 times. The project team had planned to include a widget below the search box to help users customize search results to get information about their location. But because the technology is not good enough, it was rejected. There is also a feature that can provide a way for users to find similar results. The feature was originally named "not completely different" (not entirely unlike), but later changed to the more intuitive name "different things" (something different).

The project team is still working after Ms. Mayer announced the revision to the world through a blog last week. For engineers, the new Google release date was the most criticized, and the most nerve-racking moment. Even though the search Results V8 project team has been disbanded and continues to engage in other projects, the revision continues. "In many ways, this project will never really end," said Jannaki Lamb. Improvement always lasts. ”