Congratulations! You have been randomly selected to…
Feeling lucky? No, I didn’t win the lottery today <sigh>. I just happened to be randomly selected –along with other users– to take a sneak peek at the new design that Google appears to be currently testing for its results pages.
Check out this SERP screen-shot, showing non-underlined blue links (click on the image to see the whole page at full size):
Here's what the new SERP looks like: notice how the only underlined links are the (organic and paid) result titles, and the related search suggestions at the bottom.
Now compare the above with the regular look of the same SERP, shown in the following screen-shot (which I took after deleting cookies from the google.it domain in my browser):
...and here's your regular good ol' Google SERP: all links are underlined (looks familiar?)
Could you spot all the differences? In the test version of the SERP, all links are blue, but only some are underlined. But that’s not all: the vertical space between the anchor text and the underlying blue line has doubled (from 2 to 4 pixels, in my Firefox).
This results in less visual clutter (especially noticeable with local results, as shown in my screen-shots), and more legible links to organic and sponsored results.
As a side effect, the screen real estate occupied by each result is slightly increased: in the new SERP layout, each organic result takes an additional 4 pixels vertically. This, in turn, makes your standard 10-result page taller by about 3% (2052 vs. 1985 vertical pixels in the above examples), granting even more visibility to the top results (and pushing further down the less lucky followers).
Do you like the new SERP style? Looks good to you? Will it stick?
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. I’ll take care of forwarding them to Google (just kiddin’). 
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