- Oct 6th, 2010
- SEO
- 36 Comments
Google Testing Website Previews in Search Results
Lately Google has been doing test after test and they’ve just come with a big change today, showing website previews in the search results.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to try it out, because it doesn’t appear to me, whatever I tried doing.
It seems like there is a preview button and I hope that the previews are not triggered by a simple mouse-over, because it would be very disturbing. I think this feature might help users to see if what they are searching for is there or not, and it might also decrease the CTR of spam sites that don’t offer quality content.
Currently we can’t know if they are going to implement it world wide or just forget about it, though they are testing it right now, so they do have something in mind.
Take a look at the screenshots below to see what I’m talking about.
via BlogStorm
This is a really cool thing Google has released.Google came out with Google Instant and now this.It is incredible.
I don’t think I’d like it very much. Hopefully I’ll be able to try it soon
This is something new to me guys. I really like their idea of showing the design of the website in the search results in order for the researchers to get a sneak peek before clicking on it.
Yeah and it could help some webmasters, while it might affect the others
What’s next, seriously? Google thinks of some of the most random ideas and puts them into action!
Alex,
This preview is pretty awesome.. now you can see a website without even going in it.. how sweet!
Yeah, that’s true, but it might confuse users. Especially the ones not so tech-savvy
Exactly, and that is actually a large portion of the audience of Google. Crazy!
They don’t need to copy Bing, they much better than that,
Marios
that’s true, Marios
I really don’t like Bing at all, but I respect them a lot. I stick with Google and Yahoo as my main search engines (but Google is the best).
I hate Yahoo especially. Bing starts to become better, though it still sucks. Google’s my only choice
Remember when it was AskJeeves.com and when Yahoo had all those commercials “Do YOU Yahoooooo?!” haha
If your site design is not eye catching, chances are you would lose the click, and drop your CTR. If you have well crafted headers, more clicks could be on your way.
That’s right, I believe.
Exactly Jun. I just read a book about headlines and how they affect CTR. Great post!
I’m still not sure how I feel about Google Instant (I have it disabled) but this is definitely interesting news to me. Would people choose based on preview or description? Of course, right now, once they land on your page, they can also hit the ‘back’ button if they think the site is ugly.
Weird and interesting…!
Actually I like Google Instant and I’ve even activated it in Google Chrome.
I haven’t seen this feature yet also but I’m guessing it will change some things. Design will matter from now, probably not as much as content or incoming links but it will matter.
People will stop click on crappy sites… this is very good for web designers
)
That’s true, though Google also highlights a part of the content, so it will matter even more
I certainly hope that it will be an opt-in thing. I live in Namibia and perhaps they just will not bring the feature here (that happens) but if they do it will probably cost us download time.
I can see that it could sometimes be useful, but I’d rather not have it on all the time.
I think I’d deactivate it too, because I don’t like these kind of things poping up in my browser. Though I believe there will be a button near each website to see the preview.
Awesome post! lol Google and its skills!!! nice one bro! thanks for sharing take care.
I’m glad you liked it, Samuel
Looks awesome. The new feature of google search is really cool. Thanks for sharing
!!
Do you think it will help the webmasters ?
It’s a cool feature. So i think it will defiantly going to help.
Sounds horrible. Although its probably better than displaying a single image next to each website.
Whatever happened to ultra fast google speeds…
Hopefully it will only appear when clicking a button, because it would suck big time otherwise.
Looks good, I think it would be good to have the option to switch it on or off though just like Google Instant have.
I think it will come with the option.
Great post. I’m not a fan of these types of features, I’d prefer if Google kept it simple. However, I’m sure they’ll provide a way to turn this off. It’s interesting, Ask had something like this a few years back with these mini binoculars next to each search result.
I don’t like it either
Hey ts3ibstf5c, very interesting post, it really got me thinking. Thank you. y1zux yo8f3
There is apparently a bundle to realize about this. I assume you made certain good points in features also.
google oversteps boundaries with my (and your) content. they had cache, which is a full preview of our websites already. now searchers don’t even have to leave the search results to read 3/4 of our page content from our whole website. they did not ask me for permissions to use 3/4 of my content for their gain. i’d like to fight it actually. but they own us more everyday while we give them the leverage they need to keep us running for bubbles.