Google Testing Image Thumbnails In Mobile Search 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 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.