WebProNews

Tag: Instant Pages

  • Google Informs Us That Instant Pages Works Great

    How comfortable are you with Google’s prerendering capabilities? Do you like the idea of your site loading faster in Chrome thanks to this technology? The idea behind Instant Pages is to immediate load the top search result for a particular query, so, when it’s clicked, it immediately loads up in your browser. Naturally, when Google discusses this technology, it refers to its Chrome browser, the prerendering works in the following browsers:

    Chrome v5 or higher, Firefox v3/4, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8/9.

    As for Instant Pages, a quick look at some of the cons that immediately popped up shows they are awfully weak, if not outright laughable:

    CON

    There are those, however, that believe Google Instant can waste much time as it saves. “You could end up getting distracted by the suggestions and read an article that you weren’t even looking for,” Heather McClain, 16, a waitress, told the BBC. “It will probably end up costing you more time than it saves you.”

    Or it could be Heather is like most tween Internet users who get distracted by just about anything.

    CON

    Another check in the con column against Google Instant is that it may hurt SEO marketers. Searchers will be less likely to click through to a second page of search results, critics say, which will give marketers fewer keywords to work with.

    Since when was it Google’s job to ensure SEO remains a viable industry?

    All of that aside, over at the Google Webmaster Central Blog, there’s a post discussing the benefits of Instant Pages. The amount of time save particularly stood out:

    We’ve been closely watching performance and listening to webmaster feedback. Since Instant Pages rolled out we’ve saved more than a thousand years of ours users’ time. We’re very happy with the results so far, and we’ll be gradually increasing how often we trigger the feature.

    For those of you worried about pageviews and are worried about how prerendering will affect these numbers, Google addresses this too:

    …only results the user visits will be counted. If your site keeps track of pageviews on its own, you might be interested in the Page Visibility API, which allows you to detect when prerendering is occurring and factor those out of your statistics. If you use an ads or analytics package, check with them to see if their solution is already prerender-aware; if it is, in many cases you won’t need to make any changes at all.

    For those of you who are lamenting the fact that your site isn’t near the top of the results for keywords you’re targeting, Instant Pages isn’t going to help or hurt you. With that in mind, it’s isn’t going to hurt if your site is at the top of the results, either. In fact, the opposite seems a lot more likely, especially if your site ranks highly for a competitive keyword.

  • Google Instant Pages Now Default in Chrome

    Google Instant Pages Now Default in Chrome

    You may recall, back in June when Google announced Instant Pages. The concept is that Google begins loading the page it thinks you’re most likely to click on before you even click on it. This means, in theory at least, that results should load instantly by the time you actually do click on them.

    Now Google has launched a new version of Chrome where this functionality is enabled by default.

    “When we can predict with reasonable confidence that you’ll click the first result, Instant Pages will begin loading the webpage early,” explains software engineer Ziga Mahkovec. “By the time you click on the result, the entire webpage will often appear to have loaded instantly.”

    When Google first announced Instant Pages, it raised some questions about how it would work with Analytics. A Google spokesperson told WebProNews:

    Most website analytics solutions assume that one page load is equivalent to one user “impression,” or page view. Although google.com only issues the prerender hint when it is confident that it knows where the user will click, in some cases it will mispredict, resulting in a page that has appeared to load but was never actually shown to the user.  Although this will happen relatively rarely, in some cases it is important for the webpage to know.

    Chrome has implemented a new API called the page visibility API that, among other things, allows websites to detect when they’re being prerendered. You can learn more about that API at our Using the Page Visibility API article.

    Analytics and advertising solutions will have to be updated to take account of prerendering via the page visibility API. In most cases the end site owner shouldn’t have to make any modifications to his page; the 3rd party will simply make a minor change to the javascript that is pulled into publishers’ pages. You should check with your analytics or advertising providers to check if their scripts are prerendering-aware.

    A month ago, StatCounter released some stats indicating that Chrome now accounts for 20% of the global web browser market.

  • Google on How Instant Pages Affect Analytics

    Yesterday, Google introduced Instant Pages (among several other things), which is a new upcoming feature of Chrome that will instantly load a search result, when Google is confident that it is the one the user is going to click on. It does this by “prerendering” the page, or starting to load it even while you’re still on the results page, so it appears much more quickly when you actually do click on it.

    The above video demonstrates this, and shows how much faster it can be compared to when you’re clicking from a normal Google search. It’s an impressive concept, but it has raised a few questions regarding analytics. Google told WebProNews a little about how it works.

    We had a good question in the comments of a previous article we ran on Instant Pages. AL wrote:

    I am wondering if this is going to impact our site analytics. If they retrieve the entire page – html, images, etc… – then would they not also trigger a visitor in our analytics, whether a visitor does or doesn’t visit our page?

    If so, that would skew even the most basic of KPIs, including bounce rate which could be a ranking signal.

    Another reader, Nick Stamoulis, added:

    That’s a really interesting thought. Since the page is pre-loading, does that get recorded as a visitor? If the user doesn’t click on the link, will that impact the bounce rate?

    As we had not seen Google address this directly, we reached out to the company to get some more insight. A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews:

    Most website analytics solutions assume that one page load is equivalent to one user “impression,” or page view. Although google.com only issues the prerender hint when it is confident that it knows where the user will click, in some cases it will mispredict, resulting in a page that has appeared to load but was never actually shown to the user.  Although this will happen relatively rarely, in some cases it is important for the webpage to know.

    Chrome has implemented a new API called the page visibility API that, among other things, allows websites to detect when they’re being prerendered. You can learn more about that API at our Using the Page Visibility API article.

    Analytics and advertising solutions will have to be updated to take account of prerendering via the page visibility API. In most cases the end site owner shouldn’t have to make any modifications to his page; the 3rd party will simply make a minor change to the javascript that is pulled into publishers’ pages. You should check with your analytics or advertising providers to check if their scripts are prerendering-aware.

    Interesting, and helpful to know. I’m assuming that most major analytics providers will adjust accordingly, but it is definitely something to be aware of.

    The Instant Pages technology is currently in the Chrome Dev Channel, and will be rolling out in Chrome beta this week, with stable and mobile releases coming in the coming weeks. Today, Google’s first Chrome OS Chromebooks became available for consumers.

  • Google Announces Instant Pages, Loads Results Before You Click

    Google Announces Instant Pages, Loads Results Before You Click

    Google made several big search announcements today, including Voice Search for the desktop and Search by Image for the desktop (like Google Goggles on mobile). They also announced a couple new “instant’ features.

    For one, at its Inside Search event, the company showed off Google Instant for image search, which will be available in the next couple months to all domains and languages where Google Instant is already available.

    They also announced something called Instant Pages, which speeds up how quickly you can access your search result (provided that the top ranked result is the right one for you). This is a Chrome-only feature. Google explains:

    Whether you’re typing, speaking, or using an image, entering your search is only part of the process. You’re not really done searching until you have the answer you’re looking for. But waiting for webpages to load adds time to this process – the average webpage takes about five seconds to load.

    With Instant Pages in Chrome, you can skip the extra seconds waiting for a page to load and get to the answers you’re looking for faster with webpages that load instantly.

    For searches when we can predict with reasonable confidence that you’ll click on the first result, Instant Pages technology will begin loading that webpage early so that by the time you click on the result, the entire webpage appears fully loaded instantly.

    The above video demonstrates the feature in a side-by-side comparison with a normal Google search.

    Google has maintained for a while now that speed is a ranking factor in its algorithm. Now, Google is helping the page load process along itself, to some extent.

    The feature takes advantage of a prerendering technology, which is being baked into Chrome.

    The technology is currently in the Chrome Dev Channel, and will be rolling out in Chrome beta this week, with stable and mobile releases coming in the coming weeks.

    As most of Google’s new features are Chrome-based, it’s worth noting that the Google Chromebooks come out tomorrow.