Google rolled out a major update for its mobile search on Friday. The company has added a video preview option to its search results. Now, whenever you find a video on Google mobile search result page, you will be able to see a 6-second preview of it.
The latest update will roll out widely next week on the Google app and Chrome on Android for now. It will be similar like text snippets for text results that we have been already seeing giving us a snapshot of the site’s content. Till now, we could only see a static image thumbnail in the search results.
”Starting today and rolling out more widely next week, on the Google app for Android and Chrome on Android, when video results show up in the video carousel, just like text snippets for text results, you’ll see video previews,” read Google’s blog post.
Google will first analyze the entire video using its machine learning techniques and then decide which part of the video is to be played for a 6-second preview. After this new update, you will now be able to see a small preview of every video in the search results. Also, it will work for the vast majority of videos on the web and is not limited to only YouTube.
“Any video on the web is eligible for inclusion, though Google may not have a preview for some of the newest videos available yet because it takes the servers a bit of time to build the previews”, Emily Moxley, Google’s Director of Product Management for this project, said.
By default, previews will only play when you are on a Wi-Fi connection. To enable previews on mobile networks or to opt out of this feature, you can visit the settings menu within the Google app or Android Chrome. It is also to be noted that these previews do not feature any ads.