14 DAY TRIAL // Google is sporting yet another mysterious doodle. Again, Google is not saying too much, but at this point it pretty clear that the doodles have to do with the announcement coming later today.
Today's doodle starts out 'blank' and the Google logo is filled out as you type your query. It's a bit less impressive than yesterday's doodle, but it's pretty fun as well.
But, more importantly, it also sends a much clearer signal. Google has been testing a radical new search page which updates as you type. Recently, more people have been seeing the experimental page as well as a couple of other experiments in the wild.
A couple of tweets from Google helped complete the picture. "Boisterous doodle today. Maybe it's excited about the week ahead...," Google said on its Twitter account.
And then, just to make it even clearer, it added: "Our doodle is dressing up in its brightest colors for something exciting coming very soon..."
Google will be holding an important press event later today. Its top people involved with the Google Search user experience and interface will be there, so it was speculated that the announcement will be related to that.
Seoroundtable has rounded up some of the features most likely to be announced at the press event. One is an AJAX version of the site which Google has been testing almost two years now.
The advantage of this version is that a new page isn't loaded every time a new query is done. However, webmasters have complained that this deprives them of valuable analytics data, since the incoming URL will not include the search terms.
Another major change which may be announced is more search results per page. There are reports of people seeing 20 or 30 results in the first page, as opposed to 10 which is the norm.
But the biggest, and likely the most controversial update, will be the "streaming results" feature. With streaming results, the results are updated as the user types a query. Any modification to the query is also reflected in the results instantly.
We only have a few hours until all of this will be revealed.