Oct 6, 2010 14:26 GMT  ·  By

Google is currently testing full page previews, a very interesting addition to its search page that slots in nicely with Google Instant. Hovering the mouse over any of the results will load a pop-up preview of the website in the link, offering you a immediate way of checking out if the site is what you're looking for.

The feature has been spotted by quite a number of users, so Google seems to be testing it with a wide number of people. If that is the case, Google may be gearing up to launch the new feature for everyone soon.

Those that are seeing the test are getting a slightly different flavour of the Google Instant version of the search engine. Google recently introduced a way of navigating through the results using the arrow keys.

It seems to be extending the idea by highlighting the currently 'selected' result with a blue background. Currently Google uses small blue arrows to indicate this.

But the really interesting thing is that a preview of the selected result is also shown, on the right. The preview is usually truncated if the page is especially long.

And Google is going one step further, it's not just a static preview, it also highlights the portion of the site you may be interested in by zooming in on the text. Curiously, the portion of text highlighted may be different from the snippet it shows in the results.

The idea is obvious and has been put in practice, in various forms, for years now. There are plenty of browser extensions out there offering this functionality as well as dedicated sites.

Google's implementation though seems to trump pretty much everything else out there, particularly because of the text highlighting.

The feature will prove useful in discerning what sites are worth visiting. And it's likely to make the search process faster, something Google is always trying to do.

But it may also significantly alter the way people use Google search, a lot more than Instant did. Users will probably visit less sites since they can decide if it's worth it or not without clicking on the link.

The time they spend on the search results page should increase as well. Of course, it actually means less page views for Google since users won't be going back and forth from the search results page to the various sites.

Also interesting to note is that the previews actually cover the search ads Google normally displays on the right side.