Google gives its knowledge panels a refresh with Material You design on desktop, mobile

Google’s knowledge panels have come with a new update where users will now be able to view or get information about a topic, person or thing in a new and much more engaging manner. For all those who don’t know, knowledge panels are information bars which appear when users search for entities like people, places, organisations and much more. They originally used to appear on the right side of Google Search.  

Now with the new update, users on both desktop and mobile will be able to see a new interface which will come with a matching colour scheme along with pictures of products, recipes, places etc. The panel will now be situated in the middle of the screen.

This new update was first spotted by 9to5Google, where the new knowledge panel will look quite similar to Google’s Material You design for all its Android devices with large cards and rounded corners along with coloured backgrounds.

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So, for example, while searching for ‘pesto’, and ‘saffron’, the knowledge panel will show product matching coloured overlay. These kinds of coloured knowledge panels will not only work for things or objects but will also work the same for people or while searching for personalities.  

Here’s an example of how the search result will look upon searching for something on the desktop:

Upon checking for this feature on the desktop, we searched for the name ‘Tim Cook’. As can be seen from the screenshot, the name and the designation of the personality were followed by huge images of him. Several other cards also came up which portray other information such as ‘net worth’, ‘age’, ‘ Twitter handle’ and much more.

When the same was done for the mobile app, then a bell icon was seen situated on the extreme right side of the screen. By tapping on the bell icon (this option is only for personalities) users will get regular updates about the same.  

While searching for states (on mobile), say for example, “Mumbai’, information like weather and other information pertaining to the state came up.

Regarding availability, this feature might not be available for everything and everywhere now. Some search results might come up with an older layout. However, it is expected that this might get updated as this new design layout rolls out for all users around the globe.

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