Last week, you may have noticed a little color (and the absence of color) in your regular Google search. Be not afraid.

In your search results, you’ll see some black on the top (contrast), plus new color on the side to highlight what type of search (everything, image, video) you’re doing at any given moment. You’ll also see that the URL is now above the description snippet (often pulled from the meta-description), just below the title. This change is definitely for the better, because usually you probably want to know the URL before the description in order to quickly rule out certain sites that may have great descriptions but not authority (e.g. freecreditreport.com vs. annualcreditreport.com for fee-based vs. free credit reports, respectively). Another striking aspect of the new design is what my colleague Joel Milani described as Google’s growing claim to the magnifying glass icon, which is proliferating across its properties—see the red circles in the screenshot below.

According to Google, the new look represents ”constant revision and improvement” that is  ”part of our overarching philosophy.” It also incorporates HTML 5, the latest Web coding language. The company will be rolling out other design changes over the the course of the next few months, not only to its flagship search page, but also to properties like Gmail and Google Maps.

As these new improvements arrive, you should be looking for what Google says are its 3 design underpinnings:

• focus
• elasticity
• effortlessness

I’d say that for this first roll-out, Google has scored on the focus and elasticity aspects. Effortlessness may require more time to judge, so I’ll mark that incomplete for now. Stay tuned to your many indispensable Google products for the next wave of new designs …