Jul 4, 2011 12:16 GMT  ·  By

A strange bug is affecting Google Images right now. Any search while not logged into a Google account will only load the first page of image results, sometimes even less than that, and then leave a blank page. Logged-in users get all of the results.

It's unclear how widespread this is, but there have been several reports of the bug seen in the wild. It is possible that people don't realize it's a bug and just assume that there just aren't that many image results for their queries.

It seems to be affecting Google Chrome users in particular, though there are some reports that it happens in Firefox and Internet Explorer as well.

The bug has been confirmed to happen in Chrome and IE. It only happens if you're running the newer version Google Image Search, introduced last year.

The new Google Image Search doesn't support Opera, so the browser is unaffected since it displays the older image search results page, with fewer thumbnails.

The bug may be related to the latest Google Search redesign, which introduced new colors and layouts for the site. Some of the features have been removed or tweaked as well.

However, since it affects just the search results part of the page, not the sidebar or the header, which have seen most of the changes, the bug may be unrelated.

What's more, the image search results section doesn't seem to have changed at all with the new design, unlike the regular search page.

Almost a year ago, Google Image Search got its first revamp since it was introduced and it was quite a change. The new layout emphasized the images themselves rather than additional data.

The new Google Image Search results page features only thumbnails, resized and sorted to fit tightly in the page. Additional info about an image, such as its origin, title, size and so on can only be seen when hovering the mouse over it.

Photo Gallery (2 Images)

This is what users affected by the Google Image Search bug see
This is what the normal Google Image Search results look like
Open gallery