Google added Instant Previews to its search functionality last fall, giving you the chance to preview an image of a website without actually clicking on the link in the search results to take you there. It has just announced that that feature is now available on mobile devices as well.
Searching via your mobile browser can be pretty frustrating, what with a smaller search box and back buttons, for example. But part of the annoyance also occurs because many websites simply aren’t optimized for mobile devices. Google’s new Instant Preview may partially address that, as it gives you a preview of a full website and its content, as well as a glimpse of any mobile version that’s available.
Instant Previews is available on Android (version 2.2 or higher) and iOS (4.0+). When you perform a Google search via your mobile, you’ll now see a little magnifying glass next to the results. Clicking on that will open a preview pane, where you can flip through the visual search results. Tapping on a preview takes you directly to the website.
The new feature only offers this preview for those links that are on the first page of search results, so if what you’re looking for doesn’t show up there, it’s back to the old search-click-through-back-button routine in order to locate the right content.
