Google Testing Image Thumbnails In Mobile Search Results?

Google is testing a new mobile search interface that shows image thumbnails in the search snippets results.

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A reader sent us a screen shot of Google’s mobile search results displaying image thumbnails directly in the search result snippets. His was using Safari mobile on an iPhone in private browsing mode, so it doesn’t appear there were any extensions or plugins adding those images to the snippets.

Here is a picture he sent:

google-mobile-thubmnail-images

Google is constantly testing changes in the search results, so it does not surprise me to see such a test. It would however surprise me to see Google decide to release this more widely. The mobile search results are suppose to load fast, adding image thumbnails will slow down that load time and based on looking at these results – it doesn’t seem to add much to the relevancy factor – at least with this query.

I am personally unable to replicate this behavior with Google.

To see more Google of these tests, see our Google user interface category.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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