The SEO side of design

[snakeair]

As all of you must know by now, google has that thing called instant preview. When designing sites for clients, you need to make sure of some things while designing. Take a look at this blog post for some information.

Recently, Google added the “Instant Previews” feature, which enables users to preview websites on search results before clicking on them. It is important to analyse how these features will affect SEO strategies and the experts involved in the SEO effort.

Instant Previews allow users to see a screenshot of the target page of search results, and even highlight the most relevant paragraphs on this page. Users will now be able to see if the following page is the one they were looking for. In case they do not really know what the page should look like, they might choose the one that looks the best.

First Impression

This feature changes the relationship between SEO and design significantly. Designers will start to have a big role in...

Continued at: SEO side of design

Your thoughts on this blog post?

[highseo]

Users will now be able to see if the following page is the one they were looking for. In case they do not really know what the page should look like, they might choose the one that looks the best.

In my own opinion its just an estimation. Because as i have seen in different websites and v7n forum, it seems that many users don't like this feature and don't use it. So i doubt if users firstly click to see snapshot of results, then choose to click on them. I think people still look at the title, then rad a little of description then decide to click or not to click on a result. Its my opinion.

[csm]

I have tested it and I found out that the Google robot, that is visiting/rendering the websites, sometimes does big mistakes in rendering.

Empty main containers, empty sites, ... I guess this "feature" (lol) is still alpha, no?

Oh by the way, for me this is kind of "Thumbshots" clone

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Preview was acting up today (for me anyways) but the following article points out what NOT to do with your site so it appears correctly in the preview.

Those blank views could have been caused by:

Don’t rely on Flash (or other additional web technology)
Keep it simple. Design your site from the ground up. Everything should work out of the box in plain vanilla HTML. Then you can add unobtrusive JavaScript which in turn can call all kinds of other fancy stuff. Because in the past, for now and for the long foreseeable future, many browsers and browser devices won’t do all the fancy stuff we want them to. That includes the page fetching Google does for Instant Previews.

Read more: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/bl...-previews.html

I have already verified a YouTube video inserted into your content doesn't work nor do dynamic actions relying on Javascript (jQuery) as the page loads.

[csm]

Originally Posted by HTMLBasicTutor

I have already verified a YouTube video inserted into your content doesn't work nor do dynamic actions relying on Javascript (jQuery) as the page loads.

You talk about any of my sites?

[HTMLBasicTutor]

No I didn't check your sites. Observation when using Google Preview.

[csm]

AFAIK the bot's are not executing JS, so if the layout/rendering relies on JS... no preview

[logoonlinepros]

But this instant preview will automatically set by google you don't need to any hard work on it.

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Originally Posted by logoonlinepros

But this instant preview will automatically set by google you don't need to any hard work on it.

logoonlinepros, this is true but if your site is designed using certain technologies it will not appear in the preview or appear broken. You need to read the article referenced and the replies before you.

[csm]

Thanks for pointing that out, mate