Just like Google Instant that we previewed last month, Google Preview has landed on .com and is yet to appear in .ca.
UPDATE Nov 11: it is now working in Google.ca
However, all is not lost you can check it out using this link.
It’s a fast preview, but it looks like the images aren’t 100% up to date, when I clicked through the preview didn’t always match the site. After some further checking looks like they are a week + old.
The word highlighting is somewhat pointless, but it may deliver some value when searching for the answer to a question and you don’t want to go into the site and search further.
The lack of Flash support was the biggest concern, in the video I show were FAO Schwartz website in Google Preview shows an image plus tag line and lots of white space, but in the site the flash piece shows these beautiful images of products, which really make the site a great experience and this could effect click throughs!
Covering up the right sidebar PPC ads with the preview could make some advertisers unhappy!
I wanted to find a site that was 100% Flash and did a bit of digging in local. Again in the video the Google preview shows a gray screen with a jigsaw piece and the website is 100% flash, with some vibrant images, a huge let down for the website owner.
This really confirms that every company needs a website today, having a directory or Google Places as your webpage just doesn’t cut it.
With click throughs from search results being the first step of the sales cycle, people are going to have to rethink their landing page coding strategy, now Google Preview is here to stay.