Google Image Search Got Tab'd

There were a lot of tests conducted on the Chinese version of Google Search, so we shouldn't be too surprised in case a new interface/functionality appears out of nowhere. In fact, this is exactly what's happened today because the Mountain View-based company has just rolled out a new appearance for Google Image Search China, the function which is based on tabs. As you can see if you look at the adjacent picture, Image Search China now provides categories, allowing people to filter their search more than anytime before.

According to Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped, the categories are: life style, female celebrities, male celebrities, film & TV series, and games & manga. What's interesting is that clicking on one of the above categories gets you to some sort of image search results page that is entirely based on tabs which means you can switch from a category to another with a single click.

What's worse is that the search engine result pages don't provide photo details, so no photo size, format, link or other information for the time being. And, let's be honest, these details are quite important for us, which was proved in the past when Google attempted to change the image search interface, but reverted to the old one after having received a huge amount of negative feedback.

Getting back to the new image search appearance, it's interesting to see that Google is continuously testing new versions of the search engine, although I highly doubt that one of these testing flavors will ever reach the main/global Google site. However, as Philipp Lenssen notes, "in a market where you aren't already leading, changes may be much easier to get through in a company, so we can see Google experimenting more with layout and functionality in China, Japan and other places than in the US homeland."