Google Announces Instant Previews For Search Results

Google has announced Instant Previews, a graphic overview of a search result that 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 your cursor over any other result to see a preview. For those of you who’ve recently stopped using your mouse to search, now you can navigate to a result, hit the right arrow key to see the preview, and hit the down arrow key to keep browsing.

In our testing, we’ve 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 you more likely to find what you’re looking for on the pages you visit.


Instant Previews Lets You:
● Quickly compare results - A visual comparison of search results helps you pick the one that’s right for you. Quickly flip through previews to see which page looks best.
● Pinpoint relevant content - Text call outs, in orange, will sometimes highlight where your search terms appear on the webpage so you can evaluate if it’s what you're looking for.
● Interact with the results page - Page previews let you see the layout of a webpage before clicking the search result. Looking for a chart, picture, map or list? See if you can spot one in the preview.

The new feature is rolling out now and should be available in more than 40 languages in the next few days.