Direct Hit: 5 Reasons Google Instant Previews Change The Game

Google has been taking our need for instant gratification and running with it.

This week's launch of Google Instant Previews, which give Google users an immediate glimpse at the web pages returned from their search query, is being rolled out over the next few days, taking a good amount of guess work out of Googling.

Google Instant Previews show users an image-based snapshot, or a visual search result, which the company said makes it faster for users to select the correct search result from the pool of results to a specific query.

"Instant Previews provide a graphic overview of a search result and highlights the most relevant sections, making finding the right page as quick and easy as flipping through a magazine," Google Product Manager Raj Krishnan wrote in a blog post.

Google Instant Previews follows other instantaneous offerings from Google, like Google Instant search and its mobile counterpart which deliver predictive and real-time search results as the user types in the search box.

Google Instant Previews works like this: users click once on the magnifying glass next to the title of any search result and a visual overview of the page will appear on the right side of the screen. Users can then hover their cursor over any other result to see a preview.

In our "always on," high speed world, Google Instant Previews is a big win for the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant; and here are five reasons why:

1. More search satisfaction. Google Instant Previews are just what they say they are: instant previews of web pages before you click away from the lineup of search results. The ability to take a sneak peak before digging in makes it more likely Google users will be happy with where they finally click their mouse. And Google said its stable of testers is already pleased. According to Google, testing revealed that searchers using Instant Previews are about 5 percent more likely to be satisfied with the results that they click and make them more likely to find the pages and results for which they were originally searching.

2. Comparison shopping without clicking. Google Instant Previews lets users compare search results visually and flip through them sort of like a magazine. They can also pinpoint the relevant content on the Web sites presented with text call outs that highlight the terms searched as they appear on those pages. It also lets users see if there are specific charts, images or other content on specific pages and compare that against the other results returned before clicking. The back button that has been worn out by willy-nilly searching will now collect dust.

NEXT: Will Google Instant Previews Go Mobile?

3. Commit it to memory. We've all done it. Tried and tried and tried to find a specific Web site only to fail and give up. "I swear I've seen it before," is usually contained somewhere in the concession speech. Google Instant Previews lets users visually assess a Web site to jog their memory and let them determine if they've been there before. A picture's worth a thousand words, they say, well a Web page preview is likely just as valuable.

4. It's instant. Duh. Google Instant Previews works at breakneck speeds, Google said, a massive improvement over waiting nearly 30 seconds for a picture to download just a few years ago or waiting several seconds for web content to show up. Google Instant Previews matches a search query with an index of the entire web, identifies the relevant parts of each web page, ties that together and delivers the resulting preview tailored specifically to a search in roughly one-tenth of a second, Google said. And Google Instant Previews doesn't stop there. Once a user clicks on the little magnifying glass the previews for the other search results load in the background -- setting up a sort of queue -- enabling them to be flipped through without waiting.

5. Mobile Instant Previews is likely coming soon. If Google has hammered one message home this year it's that its mobile strategy is top of mind. Just weeks after launching Google Instant search capabilities, the mobile version hit the Apple iPhone and Google Android devices. If that keeps up, we'll see Google Instant Previews on smartphones in no time.