Google loves showing video thumbnails in the search results, when the query seems to be answered with a video. You know, those how-to types of queries.

But Craig Gilhooly posted on Twitter that Google is testing a search result snippet that has video results without the video thumbnail.

Typically, the snippet would look like this:

But in the new test, the only graphic is this little washed out gray play icon button:

I’d honestly be surprised if Google went this route, they have always been about richening up the snippets. This steps that down a lot.

Forum discussion at Twitter.