Introduction

A new challenge presents itself for web designers and website owners in Northern Ireland with the arrival of Google Instant Previews. Google Instant Previews essentially gives users the capacity to view a website ahead of visiting it. Google accomplishes this by displaying previews (a snapshot) of relevant web pages to users based on their search keywords. A magnifying glass icon is located to the right of each search result and as the user clicks or hovers this, a snapshot of the corresponding web page is displayed. The snapshot contains an overview of the website’s content. Orange “call-out boxes” containing search query text snippets are displayed within the snapshot highlighting what Google perceives to be relevant sections of the web page. This allows the user to quickly compare results and select a page that best matches what they are looking for. There are a number of scenarios where Instant Previews are especially useful. One example is when you’re searching for particular charts, graphs or images. Instant Previews will show you where the search term occurs and you’ll quickly see whether the graph is well suited to your search or not. Another is when you search for people; by using Instant Preview, a user can quickly scan the page and figure out if the page is in relation to the individual they are searching for.

Benefits of Google Instant Preview

Quickly compare results – A visual comparison of search results helps you select the one that’s correct for you. Quickly scan previews to see which page appears closest to what you are searching for. Pinpoint relevant content – Text call-outs highlight where your search terms show up on the web page so you can consider if it’s what you’re searching for. Interact with the results page – Page previews let you see the structure of a web page prior to clicking the search result. Looking for a graph, photo, map or list? See if you can spot what you are after in the preview.

Enabling Google Instant Preview

The Google Instant Previews feature is activated once you click the magnifying glass next to the title of any result. Google will then load previews for additional results in the background.

Disabling Google Instant Preview

You can disable Google Instant Previews by clicking the magnifying glass icon a second time. At the moment there is no official and permanent way to turn off this functionality. There are a few hacks out there such as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAR1cBFh-YM

Enabling / Disabling using Shortcut Keys

Use right/left arrow keys to enable and disable Instant Previews.

Browsing Google Instant Preview Results

Click once on the magnifying glass in the search results to immediately see a preview of the web page. After activating Instant Previews with a click, you can hover over any other search result to see a preview of the online page.

Debugging Google Instant Preview

If your online page does not render properly in Google Instant Preview and you observe an error message you may wish to fix it. It is usually very challenging to read the error message as the text is so small, however occasionally a few words can be recognised. If the wording is not readable, then enlarging it using imaging tools will not make it more legible.

Detecting Google Instant Preview Errors

Google generates previews in one of two ways: 1. The ‘GoogleBot’ user agent crawls the web page To identify potential errors in this case, install the Firefox add-on “User Agent Switcher” and change the user agent to ‘GoogleBot’. Errors detected on the page can then be corrected. 2. Previews are created on-the-fly To detect possible errors, use Safari or an equivalent Webkit-based browser like Google Chrome.

Verifying Google Instant Preview Errors Have Been Resolved.

So far I have not been able to locate a tool that will render the preview exactly as Google Instant Preview does. This suggests that it is not currently possible to check that any efforts to correct errors have succeeded. My present understanding is that the web content will have to be re-indexed by Google to verify that the error(s) has been resolved.

Article by: Web Design Northern Ireland