One of the smaller search
engines, Ask - www.ask.com, has been using sneak peeks to give searchers a quick peak at what
they can expect from a site before they visit it. Searchers who use Ask.com can mouse over an
icon next to many results and see a screen shot of the website. No clicking
needed.
A search for alkaline
battery produces results images, encyclopedia and video results with images along
side the standard text listings.
Google, always watching for
search trends, seems to have noticed, because they've filed a patent for
expanding their own snippets. It looks
like Google searchers will be able to read expanded summaries of pages, or
longer clips of page text. This tactic appeals to searchers who are now
demanding more and more information faster and faster from the top Internet
search engines, and who don't want to waste precious seconds clicking on a link
and then on the back button to find just the right site for their needs. For
the search marketer it means paying more attention to where the information is
drawn from so they can control the image and the text.
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