Mar 14, 2011 at 10:39am ET by Barry Schwartz

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Google has added a new type of instant previews to the Google search results. The new previews are designed specifically for video results.

The video instant previews show you several frames from a video and may even play the video preview when you mouse over the thumbnail image. I should not, not all video results have instant previews, the video providers have to opt to show these previews.

How Instant Video Previews Work:

(1) Search Google or Google Video search and look for a video result.

(2) Mouse over or click on the magnifying glass preview icon.

(3) A drop down of 4 frames may be displayed on the right side of the icon. Here is a picture:

(4) Place your mouse cursor over the video preview frames and the video selection might begin to play on your screen.

Google’s Daniel M. Russell finds this “REALLY handy when the video results are more diverse, and you can’t really tell them apart except by clicking though to the result.”

Related Stories:

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Instant | Google: YouTube & Video

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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http://stefanw.spaces.live.com Stefan Weitz

Indeed this is cool and one of the biggest drivers of customer delight over here at Bing. Rather than just four frames, however, we will actually show you part of the video when you hover over a video clip either in the mainline search results or on in Video search. What’s really cool is how we do it – using technology developed by MSResearch, we actually try and figure out the ‘most interesting’ part of the video (under 15 seconds long) and show that when mousing over. That way, you don’t see the opening titles but rather a piece of the video which can actually tell you what it’s about.

Come check it out!
Stefan Weitz,
Bing
http://www.ratdiary.com SpragueD

The Google feature is cool, but the video previewing on Bing that Stefan wrote about in his comment is cooler. Will there be a follow up post featuring the Bing version?

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