Google Previews tweaks search engine marketing again
Saturday, November 13th, 2010
Last week Google launched its newest innovation on their search engine page: Instant Previews. The idea of a search engine website preview has been around for a while and with this launch, all Google Instant users will be able to view previews of search results pages without a plugin. This gives search engine marketing strategists call to look at their clients’ webpages and check for optimization, especially for companies using Flash websites
Google Instant Previews allows users to see Google’s cached version of a website without leaving the search results page. The look and feel of a webpage is more important than ever at enticing users to click. When a user clicks on the magnifying glass icon next to a search result, an overlay will appear with preview of the page. Once the magnifying glass is clicked, the user can hover over the other search results to scroll between previews.
So how will Instant Previews impact businesses?
Instant Previews will increase the importance of web design and usability and should decrease the number of clicks going to lower quality sites, doorway pages and sites praying on misspellings. As a company that optimizes both HTML and Flash websites, we believe Instant Previews has raised the importance of optimizing Flash websites yet again. Here is an example of Google Instant Preview:
I continue to stress to my clients in interactive marketing the importance of focusing on SEO in combination with page design and usability in order to create clean, useful and appealing sites that rank high in search engines and entice users to click. According to Google, people using Instant Previews are 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results on which they clicked.
The concept of previewing websites is far from new, but when the world’s largest search engine decides to add a visual representation of a page to the search results page, businesses must stay ahead of the curve. Google continues to lead the way in search engine innovation. From the June Caffeine update to the introduction of Google Instant in September to last weeks’ newest addition of Instant Previews, Google has made 2010 a remarkable year in search engine marketing.
