Gallery: 8 Smart Ideas for Overhauling Google's Homepage
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A group of friendly designers that have dubbed themselves the [The Letter Society](http://www.lettersociety.com/) recently attempted to reimagine Google's iconic search box.
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[Erik Wagner's](http://www.erikwagner.me/82127/portfolio) design embraces Google's trademark colors and uses diagonal lines to draw attention to the search button. Functionally, a new tab at the bottom of the screen would switch between maps and text searches.
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Instead of presenting users with a blank search box, [Frances Palmer](http://cargocollective.com/francespalmer) decided to use space to display popular queries pulled from Google Trends.
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It's a clever way to help spur more searches and to make users aware of an under-utilized Google Asset. Along those lines, the area below the fold is filled with real time widgets from the Google Now service and acts like a personal dashboard.
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Designer Jake Nolan has stripped down the Google search box to it's Platonic ideal—a single blinking cursor. A row of shortcuts to popular Google services lines the bottom of the screen.
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[Mark Manalaysay](http://markmanalaysay.com/) keeps the classic look, but used structured data modules to give searchers more contextual information. For instance, a travel query would show available flights and weather forecasts for the destination rather than a row of links.
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Manalaysay's approach could be applied to many kinds of searches. Using geolocation, Google could serve up contextually relevant results for a generic search like "sports scores."
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[Casey Crisenberry's](http://www.crisenbery.com/) approach is minimal, trading in the search box for a single line. As with many of the proposals touch friendly icons for other Google services line the bottom of the screen.
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[Alli Grunthaner](http://alligrunthaner.carbonmade.com/) proposed similarly modest modifications that were intended to unify the experience across devices.
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Chief among those changes Grunthaner proposed is a move away from underlined text as a link style to icons with ample touch targets which enhance the service when accessed through touch screens.
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[Jenn DiMenna](https://www.behance.net/jdimen20) designed a homepage with new widgets that allows easy access to important personal information.
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In DiMenna's vision movie buffs would get a constant stream of notifications and reviews. Frequent Amazon shoppers would be able to easily access tracking numbers. Instead of focusing on searching the web, this vision organizes the user's personal information.
