Google UX flaw? switching placement of Videos and Images

Question

Google offers the possibility to search for several different types of media/information: Web, Images, Video, Maps, etc.

Lately I noticed that these choices for other types of information is being switched around, resulting in a lot of errors by clicking the wrong item. Sometimes Images is put in place of Videos, Videos in place of News, etc.

My question is whether anyone knows why this is done? Is there a valid reason for this mechanism? I am not asking for an opinion but really a UX reasoning as to why this could be useful.

-- Edit to clarify why I don't like it --

I use the images function on a regular basis. So often that it became a habit for me to click the second item without reading. It is a form of muscle memory really. We all rely on muscle memory if we do things on a regular basis. It is a way of offloading your mind and getting things done with less cognitive effort.

Try a different keyboard where the ctrl key is placed somewhere else (or a mac keyboard for example). You'll probably misclick the first few hours but after some time you've learned where the ctrl key is and you can happily continue working without thinking about it. The problem here is that you can never learn it because Google keeps moving the buttons around.

That is my issue with something like this. Regular users will probably not notice this but for powerusers it becomes annoying.

Answer 1

They arrange the items depending on what you search for.

I.E. searching for 'Tax' is likely to return many News results, so that is shown alongside 'web':

Searching for 'Mexico Flag' is likely to return lots of images, so they set 'Images' as the next tab:

Whereas searching for 'Bristol' (A city in England) returns 'maps' as the next tab:

So there is a valid reason for why they switch tabs around. Whether it actually makes a benefit is different mattter.

Answer 2

Google does a lot of testing, but that doesn't mean they've tested this issue. The use case that was described in the original post was "I use the images function on a regular basis.", so frequently that the text was no longer read, only the position of where the link is located. But location changes and causes the issue. This breaks the usability rule of consistency (consistently displaying links in the same location for every search so I know where to look instead of shuffling the order to meet some kind of relevance algorithm that might seem cool in principle, but causes issues for frequent users). One thing to point out on the side of Google is that this is probably an edge case. It's not likely that a majority of Google users are repeatedly and frequently doing image searches at a poweruser level. Even so, with an audience the size of Google search, even if it's a small percent of users, we're probably still talking about a lot of people.

For a power user that is doing repeated searches, telling them to just read the text is not a valid solution to the problem. Imagine that you are supporting a product and a customer calls in and complains that links are moving. A response of "read the text" would probably leave a bad impression.

The problem has already been stated, the user is not reading the text and is relying on muscle memory. In a sense, your telling the user to shut off their instinctive reaction to the UI, slow down, and read text to make sure it's correct. The problem is that link options are being shuffled around, making for an inconsistent experience and telling the user they need to do something differently doesn't solve this issue. If the re-arrangement of links would need to stay for some reason, one possible approach to fixing this would be to visually distinguish the link options with color, and potentially icons for those that are color blind (potentially including the existing link labels with the color and/or icon additions). That way the user can start relying not on positioning, or reading each link until they find the right one, but on icons and color to target the desired link.