How to Take Advantage of Google’s new Instant Preview Search Results

Zack Katz — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:27:39 +0000

Google has once again taken a cue from Bing

Google recently has added a bunch of features to their search engine: live results, keyboard navigation using directional arrows, and a completely re-vamped interface. Today, Google rolled out Instant Previews – a feature that involves Google taking a snapshot of the website. Instant Previews result in — according to Google — 5% more user satisfaction in the search results they get.

While Bing doesn’t feature image snapshots, they do have a pop-out box with additional text. Google has consistently augmented their “eye candy” since Bing launched.

Google doesn’t close lightboxes in the Instant Previews.

If you’re trying to show someone a message when they view the Instant Preview, showing a lightbox with an image in it might work. The Instant Previews are 302 x 405px, so the ratio is 1.34. If you were to create a large image that was larger than your content and had a ratio of 1.34, you may be able to display something unique to Google users.

Non-standard indexing rate

Google does not generate the screenshots live; they seem to be generated when crawling the website, which makes sense. Google’s Instant Preview of a Twitter page corresponds to the “Latest Results from…” scroller results. If it’s not updated in Google’s index, the image will not be updated.

For local SEO, consider adding a banner with local images

If you’re trying to reach an audience that is looking for a local result and not some spammy directory, consider adding images of the area. This may includes pictures of Denver skyline, the mountains, etc.

Denver SEO Image Results Are Back

Zack Katz — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:24:18 +0000

Recently, in Google search results…

Last summer, Google was testing many new technologies that are now a regular part of search results, such as Google Profiles. They had been very aggressive in adding video and images into results as well. This meant that in addition to the ten links, there were video, image, map and profile results that were all in the mix.

Google then backed away from so aggressively integrating those results into search results, and has been slowly refining and redefining their layout.

Changed the width of the results so that instead of 100% browser width, results now have a maximum width. Many people believe that this is to increase click-through rates for the sponsored results.
Added real-time search results (“Latest results from…”) from Twitter and news websites after they brokered a deal to access Twitter data
Added weather, sports results, and other “factual” results above organic results
Increased the width of the “OneBox”

There have been many changes over the past year, and many more will come.

Images return in “Denver SEO” search results

Google shows images for the search Denver SEO...is that what users are wanting?

During that span of time last year, images were shown for the query “Denver SEO,” but since then have disappeared. Now, they are back, and given a prominent location in the search results (currently between position 3 and 4).When a user searches for Denver SEO, why would they want an image? The only explanation I can think of is that SEOs may be clicking on their own image results to artificially give weight and relevance to something that I believe isn’t hugely relevant.

What’s even more interesting is that some of the images don’t even have alt text or title attributes that Google would read to know what the image is about. Thus, Google is simply inferring that the images are relevant based on the surrounding content and the name of the image file itself.

Analysis of shown images

The first two images shown are from the same page and are right next to each other on the page. They have the same alt text, and virtually the same title attribute.

The next image is from the Katz Web Services website and has alt and title attributes.

The fourth image is from HighPoint SEO and has relevant alt and title attributes.

The last image has no alt or title tag, and is from New Media Denver.

What is the take-away?

I believe the moral of the story is that alt and title tags help get images properly indexed by Google, but that surrounding content and image file names are most important.

What are your thoughts?

The Denver SEO Company » Google SEO