We have tested the userscript in Firefox and Google Chrome where it worked exactly as advertised. It might also work in other web browsers that support userscripts (Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera).

Google Chrome users can install the userscript right away by visiting its Userscripts.org page. Firefox users on the other hand need to install the Greasemonkey extension before they can install the userscript in their web browser.

The old Google Search interface will immediately be available on google.com and all localized Google search engines.

Google users who want to restore the old Google search results pages as well can take a closer look at Old Google, another userscript, that removes the Google Search sidebar from the search result pages.

The left sidebar does no the other hand offer several new features that have not been there before when using Google Search.

If you look at the new search sidebar you notice that it is divided into three different sections; Search source filters, filters that manipulate the search results and the something different section that links to related searches.

If you take a closer look at the search results filters you notice several interesting filters at the end of the listing.

It is here possible to only display sites with images, reduce or increase the number of shopping sites in the results, enable page previews and translated search.

Standard results

This is the standard search results listing. A mix of websites, images, news and other sources on the same page.

Sites with images

Will only display sites that contain images. There seems to be a minimum image requirement of three.

Fewer shopping sites

Removes most shopping site related links from the search results including Google’s own “shopping results” block.

More shopping sites

The exact opposite of fewer shopping sites. Will list many shopping sites and less regular results.

Page previews

Displays thumbnails of every page in the search results. The thumbnails are placed on the right side of the results.

Translated search

Offers to translate the results into another language. Controls are displayed on top of the search results. Uses Google Translate for the translation.

The new search filters can be helpful at times. The biggest problem we see is that they cannot be set as permanent filters.

Are you using the search filters of the new Google sidebar?

Personally I like sidebars, but for some reason I don’t use them. I have a pretty wide screen and a system which has plenty of memory to eat, but to me the cleaner my screen, the less stuff I have to focus on, the better. I never really liked the Vista sidebar, it’s just too “big”, it looks a bit clunky sometimes, but there are some good widgets you can put in there, so it’s not all bad.

I pretty much like Google’s sidebar, and it also has some good widgets, the best feature is probably the integrated hard drive and email search, which really can be a savior sometimes. It also seems that there are better widgets for the Google Sidebar, but that might be just my perception. In my case I don’t really find the widgets so useful that I would need to see them permanently on a sidebar, what’s your take on all this, do you perhaps use another sidebar?