New UI for search engines popping up

Just a couple of days I was searching on Yahoo! and noticed some special results for linkedin. See a search for my name:

Note the little icons on the right to get an explanation, send the link to a friend or stop getting this type of result.

And that made me think of some recent changes in Google search results when the page comes from a forum or a group. Here’s an example:

Note how you can see some details about the forum post, number of replies, etc.

This morning James pointed out how in Google a new interface has appeared and lets you add, edit or remove results. Here is how the interface looks for one result:

Depending on the position and result, the icons appear and disappear (you can’t promote to a higher position a result that is already at the top, of course) and also another icon to remove the result appears. At the bottom of the page a few interesting links appear showing you your previous actions and giving you the opportunity to revert your changes or update there. There’s also a link to learn more about SearchWiki. It would be interesting, and maybe it is already coming, to be able to mash up with results from people I know and trust. We’ll see.

After many years of minor tweaks to the Google UI that was replicated by most if not all search engines, we now see some innovation. It’ll be fun!