Google Instant Previews Now Mobile!

I have an iPhone and I noticed the last day or two that there was this weird 'magnifier glass' that popped up next to some of the search results. I had no idea what it was until I came across the Official Google Blog, which explained a little bit about what it was and how it worked.



Credit: Google Official Blog

Basically, when you search for something and the 'magnifier glass' shows up next to the results, if you tap on one of those magnifying glasses, it'll show you a 'preview' of the websites that were a result of your search. Google stated in their blog:

"...you can visually compare search results from web page snapshots, making it easier to choose the right result faster, especially when you have an idea of the content you’d like to see."

I tried this out for the first time and decided to make a simple search for "blogspot". Right away, I noticed that almost every website that came back as a result of the search had a magnifying glass next to it. So that part of it seemed to work just fine. I could easily tell which websites had the preview, and which ones didn't. So I took it one step further and tried the Instant Preview feature from my iPhone. First of all, I noticed that it took a good amount of time to download all of the previews of the websites. I'm talking time that I could have looked at least two, maybe three, websites and actually be able to read what was on the website. It was cool that, after all of the preview results were loaded, I could do a side-by-side comparison of what each site was like. But even with the preview, I wasn't able to tell what each website actually had on it and how much of it was relevant to my search. Using the preview feature, I was able to ditch a couple of the results because I could tell, from titles that I could read and the few pictures that it showed, that they didn't really want what I was looking for. I think that this feature is just not perfected for mobile use. Even on my iPhone, I think that the view of the site is too small. It might be easier for those you that are HTC Evolution users, but that's not a guarantee.

I don't think that this feature is a complete and total waste of time, if it is improved upon by Google. Since it is so new, I'm sure Google knows that it does have room improvement. And I'm sure that they knew that not everybody would like it when it first came out. It just needs time to grow.