We just getting over the new Google Local results and still figuring out how to make the most of it and Google strikes again.
Google Instant was rolled out to help users find things even faster, hence not surprising the new feature has the same goal. Now you can use Google Instant Preview to see the snapshot of the page without leaving Google.
According to Google such preview increases satisfaction with click-through by 5%, not much, so some do say this update will not see the full roll out, but maybe Google wants us to change our behaviour and stop franticly clicking on results to open in new tabs and bounce from most of them within a few seconds. Such update can mean lower traffic to your site but also for lucky ones (ie hard working and understanding the purpose of site) people it can mean traffic with lower bounce rate.
How is this going to impact Online Marketing?
1. The previews do not show flash (at list in this version).
2. Previews highlight the text that matches the description in the results, making it readable compared to rest of the text.
3. Previews are rather small screen shots, putting clattered sites into disadvantage.
4. The previews on opening will overlay the side PPC Ads.
Implications:
a. Flash
Another great point for you to argue against Flash on companies site.
b. Layout
This will definitely favour clean “single point” layouts with maybe one big header, block of text and most probably two/one column layouts will have advantage.
c. Meta Description
Now you will have to consider and test if your site will perform better without having “meta description” in order to have that extra highlighted text in the preview (see example image below) or you can still strongly believe that people will trust your meta to click through without seeing it reflected in the preview.
d. PPC
Even harder competition in PPC for the top spots as left side will be covered on the preview. Giving more power to the organic results.
But, have to remember that:
- You actually have to click on one of the icons in order to enable the previews of all the sites.
- Web-master can opt out of participation
- Maybe it will be as per Instant Search available to those who are logged in and will not impact as much
- We don’t know which version results are being used, how old the cache and how fast it will renew the snapshot.
Big thanks to @RobBothan on help with this article.
Play around with new feature, before it rolled out on Google.