Google Has a New Results Page - An Ugly One

First of all, I don’t really think Google has a new results page. I think some spyware in the form of a cookie was causing the page displayed in my browser for Google search results to be altered. 

So it is Saturday evening and I haven’t been online since early Friday. I check email, go to MySpace and a couple other sites, then try a google search for snowboarding. Much to my surpise, a very ugly SERP:

 

Is Google testing a new result page? Is it a bug? Do I have a virus? Has someone hijacked Google? Hmmm…

 So I delete my cookies (always the first step when something like this happens) and do another search, this time for cookies. Lo and behold, we’re back to the old results page layout:

Yes, I did check and my first search was also showing the classic Google page again. I have sent an email to Google, but do not expect a quick reply. In the meantime, this post at the Search Engine Roundtable can help explain the phenomenon. I had read the SE Roundtable thread previously, but it mentioned looking out for SERPS that do not have a link to cached pages for any of the results. As you can see in the first screenshot, this was not the case.