Google is testing a new image and text preview on hover

Google Search is probably the most used tool on the web today, so the company is always trying out new ways to improve it. This week, Google Search is testing a small UI tweak that shows image previews when you go over a link.

Now appearing for some users in private browsing modes, this new UI tweak for Search looks normal at first glance, but it can provide a little more detail without its leaving the check window.

The new test can display a larger text preview and, in some cases, preview images from an article directly from Google Search when you go over the link. Whether enlarged text or images are available depends on the article and possibly the topic. When we searched for “Stadia,” we could only find text previews from sources such as Wikipedia and the Stadia Dev Blog. However, a search for “Note 20 Review” showed image previews from almost all sites as well as slightly expanded text previews.

This feature may not prevent people from clicking through to a website, but it does provide more context before leaving search results. Admittedly, though, it looks a bit cluttered with image results not going away once you stop going over them.

You can see the new UI test in action below.

We were able to activate the mode in Chrome incognito mode earlier today, but in the hours since it went away. Some users on Twitter they also discovered the new UI. It is unclear if this will ever be made public.

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