When you’re looking for videos on specific topics like how to bake a cake or how to play the guitar, you will most likely have so many choices on your search results page that you don’t know which one you should actually watch. In fact, you will most likely have to click each one to see if it’s the video you’re looking for. Well now Google wants to help you out as they launch a 6-second silent preview of videos on your Google search results page.
Previously, the text snippets gave you a preview of what you can expect if you click on that links. Similarly, this new feature will now happen to the video results that you will see on the carousel. Instead of just the thumbnail that you normally see, those supported videos will play a six-second preview so you can decide whether or not you want to click on the video and watch the whole thing. Don’t worry, it will also be a silent preview so it will not be that annoying.
What you’ll see isn’t just the first six seconds of the video or any random six seconds, as it may not be the best indication of what it is all about. Google is using machine learning technology to analyze the video and select which are the six seconds that will best represent it. There are no details yet as to how that algorithm is going to work, but we should eventually be able to understand it.
However, not all videos have that preview support yet. Obviously, those from YouTube will have that feature, but those from other sites may not yet be able to do so but eventually they should. English is the only language supported for now, but expect it to also expand to other languages as well. This feature is available with the Google app on Android and Chrome on Android. The preview will only play if you’re on a Wi-Fi connection.
SOURCE: Google
