Quick view PDF-files in the search results

Christine Davis, a software developer, and Raj Krishnan, Product Manager.

In the Google search results sometimes fall into the documents that were not designed for the web browser, such as - PDF- files. Previously, to view documents of this type, it was necessary to download them to your computer and open it with a single application. So we asked our users to quickly and easily view these files in HTML format directly from the browser. For this purpose it was necessary to click on ... Of course, this was a step forward, but, unfortunately, in this case lost a part of the original PDF- format file, such as graphics, tables, fonts and other elements of the text.

Today we've added new links to quickly view PDF-files, without prejudice to the format. New features use the same technology that has already. available to users of Google Docs and Gmail. And webmasters via the Google Docs viewer. Since July 2009. we are introducing this technology in a retrieval system, and to date have added links ... New links appear at the end of the second row of the search result, just under the title of the document.

For example, below are search results for cyclists marathon calendar for 2009:.

If you click on the link ... That would look so PDF-file:.






In the future we are going to introduce the viewer with support for more file types and documents. In the meantime, you will occasionally come across a link ' in the form of HTML ...