Google adds site previews to Instant Search
- Tuesday, 09 November 2010 08:00
Love 'em or hate 'em, Google's new "instant" search results are here to stay. The company recently announced that Google Instant was coming to mobile devices, and now, Google is expanding upon that functionality with the introduction of Instant Previews: a way to visually scan through your dynamically-generated search results before choosing which link to click. The feature is (as usual) slowly rolling out to Google users over the next "few days," according to the company, and will be available in 40 languages.
The Instant Previews aren't shown by default, but a magnifying glass next to your search results will indicate that it's there for you to see. When you click on the glass (or the text of the snippet under the page link, for that matter), a snapshot of the site in question will appear to the right of your results—you can see previews for other links by hovering over them once you've clicked on the magnifying glass the first time. Not only that, but Google will highlight the part on the preview where your relevant text is so that you know where to find it on the page (see image above).













