Very interesting news on Google, this time neither more nor less than on the results page. It is a preview of the page that you can see without having to visit it. A virguería, hey!. From now on we can see “what looks like” a website has from Google, and assess if we want to go. Let’s see an example:
As we see, we a magnifying glass appears right next to the title of the page. If we click on it, an image is displayed to the right in which we can see a reduced page capture in question. Once we have made the first click, we only have to go over the other results (or go down with the keyboard arrows) so that the image changes, and thus see all the pages.
If this already seems good, what is coming is better. It turns out that in the capture, we not only see the web, but also we can also see a highlight (underlined in phosphorite and enlarged), of the most relevant piece of content according to our search. The theme is like this:
According to Google, this new tool increases user satisfaction by 5% regarding the page found, since it allows you to compare and value content quickly and intuitively. Or just sometimes you want to go to one page you already know, of which you do not remember the URL. You no longer need to try one by one, but simply use the preview until that you recognize her. Or if you are looking for something visually concretesuch as a video, image, schematic, etc.
As we can see, thanks to this system we can ensure much more that the results can be relevant, and decide whether to visit the page or not. Google has already said that a “page preview” does not count as a click, so this will not affect our visits… will it?
How can it affect SEO?
This leads us to wonder to what extent it will affect the CTR (clicks/impressions) organic of all these pages. And if we go further, we can ask ourselves if Google will take it into account. And it is that if it were like that, we can see how there will be changes in the rankings.
Imagine a page that has been in the first place for a long time for a given search. Surely you will have a very good CTR for being the first, even if “you don’t deserve it”, since everyone clicks on you, just for the fact of being in the first place. At the moment in which people can see it before entering, perhaps many people see it as “seedy” or not very relevant, and decide to go look at the second one, which is much more interesting, and they do click on that one. This will lead to a decrease in CTR on the first website and an increase on the second. If Google decides to take this factor into account in its ranking (many people already claim that it is so)the second page can get to be placed in the first position.
How should we adapt our pages?
In the blog for Google webmasters they indicate some “best practices” for . Let’s see what this is about:
1. Have the page clearly structured, without distracting elements.
2. Avoid welcome pages, language selection, pop-ups and other stories that may appear in a preview.
3. Don’t use flash, because (at the moment) the system doesn’t catch it, and replaces it with a puzzle token.
4. If you don’t want Google to make your thumbnails, you can use the .
Anyway, I’m sure that the Instant Previews are going to be quite noticeable, and they will give a lot to talk about. Even more than instant, since unlike it, you don’t need to be logged in to use the service. I will continue to investigate this tool, and I will continue to report. And by the way… the million dollar question… When are Instant Previews in AdWords? 😉
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