Yahoo is reportedly rolling out a new redesign to its homepage. It’s not dramatically different, but it’s different.
Business Insider has gotten ahold of a couple of screen shots. Here’s the one showing what it looks like above the fold:
For comparison, here’s what the old/current version looks like:
The most noticeable element is the disappearance of the Yahoo Trends box from the upper right-hand corner. This will no longer be in users’ faces as much, and will be displayed in a list format int he left-hand column. Meanwhile, the list of Yahoo sites that appear there is shrunk to accomodate the trends list. Any missing sites are presumably still accessible via the “more” link. They also made a little room by getting rid of the words “Yahoo! Sites” at the top of that list. This was certainly not needed.
Additionally, Yahoo has simplified the header, adding a gray bar, which encompasses the logo (which has turned from purple to white), the search box, the sign in link and the mail link. There is a drop-down menu for search options on one side of the search box, and “search” has been removed from the search button in favor of a search icon (which is purple, as opposed to the old yellow box).
The news section has become a bit more visual, with an additional main picture added, though this pushes the list of stories down further. Those stories, however, now come with snippets, and don’t appear to be categorized like they are on the old version. It’s hard to tell too much from these images though.
There is an interesting amount of prominence given to the Astrology section on the right-hand side in the new design, but it’s quite possible that this is simply a dynamic and/or personalized section. Business Insider does indicate that sources have said more personalization is coming to the page.
Above that, there is a local weather section.
So far, we have not seen the new homepage in the wild, but Business Insider says it’s been confirmed by a a source close to Yahoo, so I guess we’ll see it soon enough. According to the report, it’s a slow roll out.
Whether or not you’re a Yahoo user, it’s hard to ignore just how big the Yahoo homepage truly is. Have you ever taken a look at Yahoo’s realtime pageview counter for it? You can access it here. As of the time of this writing (3:04 PM), it is closing in on 109 million pageviews for the day. As far as I can tell, it’s getting about two to three thousand a second.
Image credit: Business Insider