The previous thumbnail images, which were fairly small, have been replaced by a significantly larger image that takes up far more on-page real estate in the search results. Also, Google has replaced links to Google News results with direct links.
If you dislike the amount of real estate that Google News listings are currently given in the Google search results, you definitely won’t be happy with the new Google News OneBox change that is currently being tested, as reported by Google Operating System.
There are two major changes they have made, both of which will reduce the natural search result listings for many searchers.
The previous thumbnail images, which were fairly small, have now been replaced by a significantly larger image that takes up far more on-page real estate in the search results. For breaking news, I could see how people might gravitate towards these images. But for other searches, the images are probably going to be quite detracting from the natural search results, although the images will likely have a fairly significant click-through rates.
The second change, and one that I use very frequently, is when you search for something in Google and there are many news results that Google believes the user could be searching for, it initially provides a link leading to the news results for that particular search. With this change, that link has been completely removed, and simply replaced with direct links to the news results themselves. At the end of the news listings, it does contain a link to view further news listings, but it isn’t very noticeable to users.
While this new style of integrated news listings seems to be a limited test at this time, it is worth noting that often these tests do make it into the search results. So don’t be surprised if you start seeing these listings that are definitely pushing more users to news results from the natural search results.