Following the positive feedback received from Google Instant which searches while you type, Google have recently released Instant Preview with the primary goal of reducing searching time for users.
Google has currently released information that searchers using the new Google Instant Preview are 5% more likely to be satisfied with the search results they click after seeing a visual preview next to the listing.
The basic idea of Google Instant Preview is to essentially give users the ability to see a website before they visit it. It does this by taking a screenshot of every webpage in its index and giving users access to it via a magnifying glass icon that sits to the right of every search result. When a user clicks on the magnifying glass icon, a screenshot of the webpage in question will appear to the right of the search result listing.
“We realized early on that this kind of experience would only make sense if it was lightning fast. Not long ago simply downloading an image could take 20 or 30 seconds, and even today many websites take four or five seconds to load”
Commented the Product Manager in the Google Blog.
He added
“With Google Instant Preview, we match a search query with an index of the entire web, identify the relevant parts of each webpage, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview completely customised to your search–usually in under one-tenth of a second.”
When a searcher performs a search and sees the search results page displayed, they do have a choice of whether or not to activate the Google Instant Preview feature by clicking on the magnifying glass icon. Therefore, it will probably be more beneficial to have a well-designed and well-structured website that previews well. Reason being is that if a website looks unprofessional or out dated on the preview, you could find searchers avoid clicking on it as opposed to clicking on a website that DOES look professional and modern in its preview. Again, as mentioned in other topics, it boils down to trust and how users see a professional website more trusting than ones that look unprofessional.
Google Instant Preview is here to stay and designed to make the search selection process easier and according to Google, faster, but the bottom line is good SEO practices are what is going make the difference of whether or not you get discovered on the search engine results pages and this has always been the case. Meaning the introduction of the Instant Preview tool should not affect organic SEO much if at all.
For more information on organic SEO techniques contact us today and see how your website can get discovered on page 1 of Google and let users start Instant Previewing your site today.
