Search Engine Site Preview Images

Let webmasters decide what is shown

[Samizdata]

Since the implementation of the new Google layout a couple of weeks ago the idea of "site preview" images in the SERPs has gone mainstream - whether we as webmasters like it or not.

Many of us will remember the Cuill fiasco last year, when the wannabe search engine had a similar idea and placed what it intended to be relevant images next to a site's SERP listing - but as we know, these were often less than relevant and sometimes showed an image associated with a direct competitor of the site.

While Cuill is easy to laugh off, Google and the other majors are another matter - and it seems to me that some kind of graphical representation of a site is becoming the norm.

But as we have seen in the recent thread about the Google layout changes [webmasterworld.com ] some sites get previews of varying quality while others get an empty box, and nobody knows how this is determined.

Over in the WebmaterWorld Spiders forum [webmasterworld.com ] there has long been discussion about unidentified robots suspected of making screenshots, and some will have blocked these on principle, preferring robots to identify themselves honestly.

So the current "site preview images" are haphazard, confusion reigns, and there is no transparency, but I think there may be one thing that all webmasters could agree on:

The "preview image" should be chosen by the webmaster, not the search engine.

The obvious analogy would be a favicon - there is no reason that the image displayed in the SERPs needs to be a facsimile of an actual page, it is merely an exercise in brand recognition (and we own the brand).

So how would this idea be implemented? Official incorporation into the HTML specification would take far too long, but the major search engines have previously agreed on practical methods in other areas - for example, specifying sitemap files in robots.txt - and it seems to me that we need something like that to clean up the current mess and provide a documented solution with a specified image size and format.

I don't want to leave it to Google, Bing or (don't laugh) Cuill to decide what - if anything - to show against my SERP listing. And I certainly don't want them doing it by some secret method.

How about the rest of you?

...

[Staffa]

Hear, hear !

All in favor of the favicon.

[Status_203]

Except that the favicon's purpose is to be displayed by the browser when visiting your site, hence designed for your purposes. Preview images are displayed on the SEs sites and are therefore designed for their purposes.

Can't see it happening given the potential for abuse. I suppose the closest you could get is cloaking your site for Google et al when they take the preview. Could be sailing pretty close to the wind with that though.

[Samizdata]

I suppose the closest you could get is cloaking your site for Google et al when they take the preview

As far as I can see nobody yet knows exactly how they take the "preview" (and some sites don't get one).

To illustrate the absurdity of the current situation I will use WebmasterWorld as a convenient example: thousands of pages indexed, all looking more or less the same (especially in a small preview image) - do search engines really want to take thousands of screenshots (if that is what they are doing) in a case such as this? Even if they just used the front page it changes by the hour - though as I write the current "preview" is three days old.

There is no consistency in what is displayed - some images are landscape, some are portrait, sizes vary, some are missing altogether, showing only a blank rectangle - what use is that?

It's a mess, and small beer at the moment, but I get the feeling that soon all the search engines will be doing it, one way or another.

...

[digitalv]

I guess I'll be the oddball here and say I'm a fan of it. I even installed a Firefox plugin a year ago that modified the Google results to display a screenshot of the sites next to them.

Personally I think it's pretty useful, providing that the screenshot isn't outdated. That's really my only gripe about this type of technology is that images can be cached for weeks, sometimes months, before they're dropped and re-shot.

My main reason for liking it so much is because I have a visual memory and always clear cookies and all sessions automatically when closing the browser. If I ever search for something again later, I won't necessarily remember the URL or the site name, but I will remember if the screenshot matches the site I was on earlier.