Users searching on Google will soon be able to see previews of
websites before clicking on them.
With Google Instant users get results as fast as they type.
Once they get results back, they choose a site to visit based
on the information in each result?like the title, a snippet of
text and the URL. Over time Gogole has made improvements to its
search results and snippets to help users pick a great page.
Now Gogole is making a leap to image-based snapshots?a new kind
of visual search result the company calls "Instant Previews"
which makes it even faster to choose the right result.
Instant Previews provides a graphic overview of a search result
and highlights the most relevant sections. To use it, click
once on the magnifying glass next to the title of any search
result and a visual overview of the page will appear on the
right. From there, hover the cursor over any other result to
see a preview. For those users who?ve recently stopped using
their mouse to search, now they can navigate to a result, hit
the right arrow key to see the preview, and hit the down arrow
key to keep browsing.
Google found that people who use Instant Previews are about 5%
more likely to be satisfied with the results they click. The
previews provide new ways to evaluate search results, making
users more likely to find what they?re looking for on the pages
they visit.
Instant Previews offers users a visual comparison of search
results and it will also pinpoint relevant content - text call
outs, in orange, will sometimes highlight where users' search
terms appear on the webpage so they can evaluate if it?s what
they're looking for. Page previews also let users see the
layout of a webpage before clicking the search result.
With Instant Previews, Google matches users' queries with an
index of the entire web, identify the relevant parts of each
webpage, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview
completely customized to their search usually in under
one-tenth of a second.
The new feature is rolling out now and should be available in
more than 40 languages in the next few days.