Google Instant Previews: Will it Change the SEO Landscape?

The closing months of 2010 are proving to be busy ones for Google – and by extension, busy ones for the entire SEO industry. The recent release of Google’s Instant Previews, particularly, has sent waves of reaction through the search community.

By now you probably know that when you click the little magnifying glass next to a search result (or when you tell Google to do it automatically), a graphic representation of the page you’re considering pops up.

Some people, like Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand.com, took the Instant Preview release as more water under the bridge. In fact, Sullivan wonders what took Google so long to do this. He reminds us that Ask.com tried a similar tactic some years back that was not overly well received.

However, other critics, such as Patrick Stafford at SmartCompany.com, see a much more significant change coming to SEO as we know it. If people begin to click on a search result due to the “look” of the site, rather than the information in the descriptive copy, your position on a page may take a back seat to how attractive your page is to the eye.

Experts say that much to the dismay of webmasters, but much to the joy of page designers everywhere, how your page looks is now going to be important. Colors, the size and position of the logo, even your who site layout now needs to consider how eye-catching it is.

Knowing that, 2011 could be an interesting year for SEO indeed.

Danny Sullivan: Google is the “New California”

It’s official, says Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand.com; Google is no longer the most popular kid on the block – at least when it comes to attracting and keeping good people.

Citing the recent departure of Lars Rasmussen, the creator of the highly popular Google Maps and the not-so-popular Google Wave. Sources indicate that he’s headed to Facebook, to join Facebook COO and former Google bigwig Sheryl Sandberg.

Sullivan says that’s no big surprise. Why? Because Google is the current “California” of SEO.

Sullivan compares the Google of today to the California of the 70s and 80s. Everybody wanted to live in California back then; enough of them moved there that the state went from being a relatively problem-free paradise to an economic, bureaucratic nightmare. Still, more people want to move to California all the time. Those who get tired of the overcrowding, etc., eventually leave for more appealing scenery, until those places too become another “California.”

Sullivan says that is exactly what Google is going through right now – growing pains that any huge company eventually experiences. People who’ve worked there for a very long time are starting to get restless and are looking to move on. Still, more people want to work for Google, even though their expectations of how they will benefit are much different than those who joined before the company went public.

Sullivan points out that Yahoo was the “new California” in search before Google was, and Facebook is undoubtedly poised to take the helm at some point in the future. But his point is that these changes, while they may not be necessarily good for a company, are unavoidable as companies grow into “adults.”