One of the most successful posts on State of Search ever is this one. It is a post I actually wrote on the plane, on my iPad, because I was so annoyed with a new feature which Google launched: the blue arrows.
Apparently many agree with me (and some disagree) that they are annoying for those using the arrows to scroll. Now when I’ve finally gotten used to them and a different way of scrolling (still not using the arrows though) Google decides enough is enough: they are gone.
Together with that change Google also added Instant Previews to the sitelinks. Now your sitelinks can be previewed. It also seems like Google has added some extra rich content to the previews.
Blue Arrows
Let’s start with the Blue Arrows. And no, we are not talking about the giant big arrow Google used last week to point people going to google.com on their now public Google+. We are talking about the small blue arrows in front of the search results. They launched this in October 2010. It was supposedly build to speed things up, navigate through the results quicker with your keyboard, using your arrows. As said, I hated it.
Google has not officially made any comments on this, but if you do a search they are clearly gone.
Instant Previews in Sitelinks
Recently Google changed the sitelinks to look more like a ‘real’ result. And what do ‘real’ results all have? Yep: previews. It was noted already last week by Barry Schwartz on Seroundtable and indeed they are there:
It also seems as if Google has added some rich content highlighting part of the page, although I am not sure if this hasn’t been there longer already. It now however seems much more present: