Google Instant Preview Roll-Out

This week Google introduced an update to its popular search engine to include visual previews of webpage results called, ‘Instant Previews’. They proved the  point that descriptions are not the only thing that plays a strong role in user behavior when it comes to search, but visual stimuli does as well.  Guardian News reports that with “Instant Previews, netizens are about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click, according to Google tests.”

As traffic becomes increasingly congested on the web and especially on search, it has become increasingly important to give proper attention to visual design elements and address technical problems that are heavy on flash or other animated elements.  In addition, exacerbating the problem is the increasing ambiguity of results as SEO and SEM providers, many Black Hat, skew results to their favor.

However, Black Hat practices are often short sighted and neglect metrics, such as bounce rate and conversion rates.  They do this in favor of overall traffic and other less definitive metrics.  Therefore, we find that users are increasingly adapting to these practices.  Evidence of this is suggested not only in our studies but changes in the search industry.

Although Google was the first to introduce visual previews, it is not the first to offer previews of links on result pages.  Bing, Microsofts offering, included previews of content for users on result links to not only differentiate their user experience but adapt, like users, to the changing search ecosystem (look for our whitepaper on search ecosystem that will be posted in the coming months!).  Likewise, with the increasing application of social and other Web 2.0 technologies, the search environment only becomes more tumultuous for companies both large and small seeking to attract users.

However, this doesn’t mean that companies and digital marketing providers should abandon SEO and SEM efforts altogether.  It only means that, like all of the other organisms in the search ecosystem, that adaption becomes vital to survival and success.