A free Internet Explorer plug-in released Wednesday provides an instant view of the content of a search listing when a user's cursor hovers over it, without having to click and wait for a page to download, reports CNET.

What seems to be lost in the "wow" of the technology is that the clicks that would have normally resulted would be greatly reduced, except for those times when a viewer actually wanted to interact or purchase. Widespread adoption of the plug-in could have repercussions for search engines - which make more money on clicks that do not convert than they do clicks that result in a purchase - and for search engine marketers who use click-to-convert ratios to help optimize their campaigns.

The software was developed by Browster and uses "pre-fetching" - instant page rendering - that serves up a copy of the webpage in a new window atop the search page. Users can click on links and information in that new window and download data from that website.

Browster 1.0 for now works only with Internet Explorer 5 and later versions, and it can be used on search sites such as Google and Yahoo, e-commerce sites such as eBay and Amazon, and other searchable sites, such as Craigslist, Bloglines, and newsgroups and news sites.