Animated snippets for search results

A method performed by a data processing apparatus, the method comprising:

• determining page resources that each include a plurality of persistent visual resources, each persistent visual resource being a visual resource that is displayed each time the page resource is displayed at a user device;
• for each of the determined page resources, generating one or more animation snippets from the plurality of persistent visual resources, comprising, for each of the one or more animation snippets:
• selecting a subset of the persistent visual resources;
• from each of the selected persistent visual resources, generating an image frame;
• and
• generating an animation snippet for the page resource, including:
• determining, for the page resource, a resource topic to which the subject matter of page the resource is descriptive, and
• categorizing the animation snippet as belonging to the resource topic,
• wherein the animation snippet includes each of the image frames generated from the selected persistent visual resources and that displays the image frames in a specific order;
• for a page resource for which one or more animation snippets have been generated, selecting one of the animation snippets for display as a search result that identifies the page resource as being responsive to a search query, wherein the selecting is based on a match between a topic for the search query and the resource topic that the one of the animation snippets was categorized as belonging to;
• and
• providing the selected animation snippet to a user device from which the search query was submitted.

A non-transitory computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

• determining page resources that each include a plurality of persistent visual resources, each persistent visual resource being a visual resource that is displayed each time the page resource is displayed at a user device;
• for each of the determined page resources, generating one or more animation snippets from the plurality of persistent visual resources, comprising, for each of the one or more animation snippets:
• selecting a subset of the persistent visual resources;
• from each of the selected persistent visual resources, generating an image frame;
• and
• generating an animation snippet for the page resource, including:
• determining, for the page resource, a resource topic to which the subject matter of page the resource is descriptive, and
• categorizing the animation snippet as belonging to the resource topic,
• wherein the animation snippet includes each of the image frames generated from the selected persistent visual resources and that displays the image frames in a specific order;
• for a page resource for which one or more animation snippets have been generated, selecting one of the animation snippets for display as a search result that identifies the page resource as being responsive to a search query, wherein the selecting is based on a match between a topic for the search query and the resource topic that the one of the animation snippets was categorized as belonging to;
• and
• providing the selected animation snippet to a user device from which the search query was submitted.