Google Adds “Quick View” of PDFs to SERPs
Sunday, October 11, 2009 4:16Google search results sometimes include documents that were not originally formatted to be viewed in a web browser, such as PDFs. In the past, the only way to view these documents was to download them and open them in a separate viewer application. To provide an alternative, we made it possible to quickly and easily view these files as HTML right in a web browser by clicking “View as HTML.” This was an improvement, but unfortunately the “View as HTML” option loses some of the formatting from the original PDF, such as graphics, tables, fonts and other elements.
Today, we’ve added new links to “Quick View” PDFs in your browser with the formatting intact. The new links are based on the same technology that’s available in Google Docs and Gmail, as well as to webmasters through the Google Docs viewer. We’ve been rolling this technology out to the search results page since July, and as of today we’ve added “Quick View” links to more than 50% of the PDFs in our index. The new links appear at the end of the second line of the result, right underneath the title.
For example, here is a search result for the IRS 1099 form:
Google Adds "Quick View" of PDFs to SERPs
Clicking “Quick View” will open up the PDF right in your browser with graphics, formatting and tables preserved. This is what it looks like after opening:
Quickly view formatted PDFs in your search results
Over time we’ll be rolling out the viewer for more documents and file types. In the meantime, in some cases you’ll see the “View as HTML” link, which allows you to see a basic HTML-only version.
Viewing PDF documents in your browser might not make paying taxes any more fun — but hopefully this feature will make it a little bit faster!
Source: googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/quickly-view-formatted-pdfs-in-your.html
Ted says:
October 11th, 2009 at 4:18 am
There is some good for the end user in this new feature. But I’m wondering if each “Quick View” will still require a visit to the site’s server – it sounds like it won’t. For instance, I don’t think the html view required a visit either, it’s just served up by Google.
So it looks like one more way that Google Search can distribute a site’s content without requiring a direct visit to the site itself – and in this case, it’s an entire document, not just a snippet. And the intention is to roll this out for other file format types, too.
Samad says:
October 11th, 2009 at 4:18 am
Yes, a great tool, however, I can confirm that it does not appear in the server logs. That concerns me as we’ll never know the stats.
Simda says:
October 11th, 2009 at 4:18 am
Sad news and again confirmation Google is trying to keep the user at the Google domain longer and longer.
Eventually Google will be able to more or less answer any question, since every other website is embedded in the Google domain.
They’re definitely playing it smart, but IMHO it’s about time to put a hold on this nonsense.
You don’t want to be recognised in Street View when you’re doing something embarrassing? How could we know, just file a complaint. You don’t want your website indexed? Just modify your robots.txt. You don’t want us to steal your PDF? ….How could we know you didn’t want that?!
They’re pushing it more and more and I don’t like it.
Bad Monkey says:
October 11th, 2009 at 4:19 am
Indexing/caching HTML is one thing and understandable – sorry, but get over it – the “cached” link also has a semantic meaning and the visitor understands what they are looking at.
Ripping documents like PDFs off sites and presenting them in a Google branded viewer however is something quite different, and obviously blatant copyright infringement.
I think this is just a fancy viewer. The problem is the webmaster will be seeing stats credited to the Google server, but that’s the only real issue. I await to be proven wrong.
Get Indexed MSN says:
January 3rd, 2010 at 9:42 pm
I’m glad (lol) to view that SOMEONE SOMEWHERE finally posted something informative about search engine optimization.
Efrain Fidsky says:
February 6th, 2010 at 8:51 am
thanks
very helpful post!