iThink - 7:12 pm on Oct 6, 2010 (gmt 0)

From the blog that I mentioned in the other thread [webmasterworld.com...]

One of the fascinating things about this is that they are highlighting certain sections of the page in orange and expanding the text to provide a snippet of information.....The snippets highlighted are not always the same as the snippet in the search results.

So there is no need for a potential customer to visit my site. He can see a full page preview with a part of the preview image that is deemed useful by google highlighted for him.

Quality content will no longer be helpful for converting a visitor into a customer. Who will bother to read my 250 words describing the widget that I'm selling on my site? A good design with all the bell and whistles like flash will win. People will make decision to buy from a particularly simply by seeing the images in the preview along with a few words or lines of text highlighted by google.

If this "feature" is rolled out then this will be the most serious attempt ever by google to kill businesses that depend on organic SERPs for a significant part of their overall traffic.