Why does Google look different? Search results get unusual new update

The small image you see when you search is slightly less small

The Google logo adorns the outside of their NYC office Google Building 8510 at 85 10th Ave on June 3, 2019 in New York City (Getty)

Google's search results might look a little different today.

The alteration is minor, and searchers might not even notice. But it is the kind of change that looks strange once you spot it.

The company has altered the way that pages show up on search results. Though it is only minor, it is an alteration that will be seen by many millions of people.

It has already outraged those who have noticed it, and claim that the new design has ruined the search results page.

The most prominent change is that the logo of the website the search result comes from – technically known as the favicon – is now much larger. It is now perhaps the most obvious thing, beyond the name of the page you have searched for, and is much more prominent than the URL.

But there are other, smaller changes too, such as the domain name appearing more clearly and in black type.

Google has also changed the results so that the "ad" label – which appears if a company has paid to be shown in the search results, rather than appearing in them organically – is more clear and obvious.

The change follows a similar alteration on mobile.

On Reddit, the change has prompted a slew of outrage from users who claim it has ruined their experience of using the site. Users voiced frustration with everything from the look of the design to the fact that the pages look more like ads and so they scrolled past them.

"The new layout and search results are so bad, I briefly thought I was somehow hacked or running some counterfeit version of Chrome," wrote one on the Google subreddit. Others suggested they had moved to other search engines, such as DuckDuckGo.

Google receives tens of thousands of searches per second from all around the world, meaning that vast numbers of people will see the changes.

While they are not thought to have rolled out to everyone, they are steadily being pushed out to anyone who searches.