Yesterday Google announced the launch of Instant Previews. The concept is very simple - the user sees a snapshot of the page that was found by the search engine.
If you're using Google regularly you might have already spotted this. But it's not obvious because to make it work you need to click in the area of the search result to turn it on (at least, that's how it seemed to work in Google Chrome).
Once on, the preview changes everytime you move the mouse cursor over a different search result. It didn't work for sponsored links.
What does Instant Previews mean for businesses?
Users can see a preview of your website before they choose to click on it, and what they see might make a difference between whether they click through to you, or not.
In a search of 'plumber london' the fourth site listed come up as 'no preview available.' That might be because their site uses the nosnippet meta tag - Google warn that this turns off the preview function.
Another website has an ugly grey box at the top of the preview, indicating that it requires a plugin. When opened, the page contained a moving Flash graphic. This looks great on the page itself, but it spoils the preview.
According to Google searchers are 5% more likely to be satisfied with the page they choose when they've previewed it first.
So why not take a look at how your website appears in a preview, and think what you can do to make it more attractive.
More information on Google Instant Previews.
