I was wondering; when it comes to search engines(concerning layout), do users prefer the look and feel of MSN and YAHOO or the simplicity of Google?
Simplicity is the main thing everyone is looking for, and you should deliver the exact thing which they are looking for..ppl are not interested in blah blah info or any unwanted topics colors or banners. its simple as that. this is my opinion, and i would like to hear others too..
1st thing is that the search engines has nothing to do what we see. It means what we see search engines don't see. Search engines see how easily they can get the information about the page, how easily they get the proper content of the page and its navigation architecture. So whatever your design pattern is, whether it is like Yahoo or like Google, you have to see how cleanly you code it. How semantic your page code looks. You have to see whether you are following the guideline for proper SEO so that search engines can easily understand your page. The idea behind Google's design is not only SEO, but also better usability and fast loading. But pages of Yahoo and MSN are also very much search engine optimized, which search engines love. You can follow the guidelines of Meta tags, proper headlines and content structures, tableless desings, perfect alt and title tags on both types of designs to make your pages search engine friendly. So if you are thinking for search engines, you have to think what happens behind your page, not just what users see. Thats brings better search engine experience.
People who come to search are more intrested in relavent result rather than design of SE. So I would say googles approach is best one. Just simple and Quick Qality results thats it.