Google's Full Page Previews
Google is testing, for some users, an overlay preview of search results – the latest in their heavy focus on User Interface changes of late, culminating in Google Instant of course (really interesting as a side note is how quickly posts get picked up – within an hour some had over 200 tweets and coverage/links from TechCrunch, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch.
Here are a few quick points on how this could impact search marketing and SEO.
- Good, clean web design now becomes a factor in click through rates from search results – search users making snap decisions on how ‘trustworthy’ a site is before clicking?
- Related to design is the depth of content on the landing page – this could be another change that benefits landing pages that have a lot of compelling content – thin landing pages with very little content could suffer from poorer click-throughs
- A click based on a preview makes click-through rate data much more valuable for Google – could this ramp up the effect of click-through signals on rankings?
- These previews look like they’re happening for Organic results only (unusual given Google’s mission to squeeze out as much PPC traffic from SERPs as possible). Will this be an own goal in terms of their revenue and encourage more organic clicks once people start getting used to it?
- Notice how the preview overlays actually sit on top of right hand side PPC ads… surely that will have a big impact on PPC click-throughs from that right hand panel.
