Practically Perfect PDF, Courtesy of Google
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 2:30 pm
This is very simple and very useful: Google is now using the Web-based PDF viewer that I’ve been enjoying in Gmail to make it easier to view PDFs that you happen upon on the Web. You know it’s available when you see a PDF in Google Search results with a “Quick View” link:
Click it, and you get a nice view of the PDF that retains formatting and doesn’t require you to download the PDF (or even to have a PDF viewer installed on your computer):
Google says that more than half of the PDFs it’s indexed now offer Quick View, with more to come; others still provide only the not-very-useful, plaint-text HTML view. And I see some PDFs that offer neither Quick View nor HTML and must be downloaded and opened in a PDF application. Even in incomplete form, it’s awfully handy when you want to peek inside a PDF before you go through the bother of downloading it–or when you don’t have any desire to download it at all.
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Remainders - Things We Didn’t Post [Remainders] | Cell Phone Tracking Blog Says:
October 7th, 2009 at 8:42 pm[…] PDFs are the one major roadblock to a nice intense Google search—you see that little indicator and you have to either download, get the shitty HTML view, or just walk away. So Google is fixing it. Now, when you see the Quick View tag, you get a nicely formatted PDF. Go ahead, try it. You’ll like it. [Technologizer] […]
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Remainders – Things We Didn’t Post | Gizmodo Australia Says:
October 7th, 2009 at 9:47 pm[…] PDFs are the one major roadblock to a nice intense Google search—you see that little indicator and you have to either download, get the shitty HTML view, or just walk away. So Google is fixing it. Now, when you see the Quick View tag, you get a nicely formatted PDF. Go ahead, try it. You’ll like it. [Technologizer] […]
October 7th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Indeed when you can load the PDF as well-formatted HTML it probably loads much quicker, unless you have one of those quick-to-load-and-render PDF viewers on your machine (yes, they exist, not all are as dreadfully slow as Adobe Acrobat).
Wonder how font formatting, vector images and exact positioning / kerning would be translated, but for a quickview that might not really matter. An “as good as it gets” view should be quite fine.
And what about the document rights? Not all PDF’s are copyright free. Is Google allowed to just cache and service these documents? Other way around: as a pdf doc owner, can you also prevent this and still have your PDF indexed?
— Abel —
October 7th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
“one of those quick-to-load-and-render PDF viewers on your machine (yes, they exist, not all are as dreadfully slow as Adobe Acrobat).”
Preview beats Acrobat, hands down.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Nice feature to increase the user search experience…this helps us to avoid installing addons in the browser
October 8th, 2009 at 12:53 am
yet another great move by google
October 27th, 2009 at 5:42 am
used this function this morning….really useful!
July 18th, 2011 at 2:13 am
Long live PDF! This is great, I've heard that PDF's are also boosting organic SEO and far more searchable than ever before? I hope that's the case. Although, sometimes I do get ratty with PDF when it won't let me copy and paste particular segments for research, but oh well! I think PDF's are becoming the literary equivalent to video productions online.
AH
Skeleton Productions.