Binoculars Icon Image

Flash and Google Instant Preview

Google’s recently launched Instant Preview feature, enabling searchers to click on an icon to have a sneak peak of a landing page before they click on to the site, has been met with a mixed response from users.

Personally, I quite like the feature – I think it speeds up the search process, as you can assess the quality of sites without jumping back and forth from the results page. Great for Google searchers who want to save time by eliminating bad looking web sites from their search.

Yet, site previews are nothing new. In fact, it’s old news for Ask.com who launched their binoculars feature (landing page thumbnail preview) over 6 years ago, and have since removed the functionality in a recent update. Last year, Bing launched Quick Preview – providing searchers with a text summary of the landing page information.

In comparison, I think Google Instant Preview betters these older features – the image is large enough to get a feel for the quality of the website, and you can also see a text summary to validate the relevancy of the information.

However, one major flaw is it doesn’t work for flash websites…

Take a look for yourself… the screenshot above shows you how flash sites look. This looks unprofessional, and it appears to be an oversight on Google’s part. No doubt the owners of flash sites are a little annoyed about this. Apparently, Google engineers are currently looking into the problem, so let’s hope a solution isn’t too far away.

About the Author

Robin Painter is the author of this article and a freelance web design and SEO specialist, based in Solihull in the UK.

LEGO Universe Beta: Race Place