A Possibly Important Little Interaction?

I should also add that at a glance, the grid looks like it has less space to display any additional information that might be helpful to make a purchasing decision. The way Google has overcome this limitation (in both the A and B versions) is with an inline expanded detailed view seen below. Hence, clicking on any product, more information is shown before sending a viewer onto a different web site.

So Are Grids Better For All Of Google’s Searches?

Not necessarily. Prying further into other queries such as “wine” we discovered that the list view is still active in some cases (similar to Bol’s experiment result). And equally confusing is the “flower” (singular not plural) search query which also shows a list view. Google may have only run this experiment on a very defined segment of some sort – possibly only effective in certain situations. However, many other shopping-related searches still look like they are skewed towards using the grid.

Have Any Explanations For When To Use Lists Vs Grids?

And if you have ideas as to when to use grids vs lists, please share your interpretations as a comment. It would be great to better understand and better predict when to use one layout vs another.