Well, let’s find out what Google’s means by universal search from a user’s perspective:
Search across all content with new universal search effort
In striving to give you the best results to your search queries, we’ve found that the best information can take many different forms. For this reason, we have taken the beginning steps towards a new universal search effort that provides a more holistic search experience on Google. Until recently, you could find the best results for your searches within the separate and distinct Google properties (e.g., web, images, maps, videos, books) by clicking a link above the search box. Using a universal search approach, Google technology searches across all of the content sources, integrates, and then ranks the results for the best answers. So depending on your search query, you may see results from news, images, videos, local, or books integrated with the web search results. We also introduced new contextual navigational links so that you can click to see more results from a suggested type of content. And we’ve added a new Google navigation bar to the top of the page to provide easier navigation to Google’s products.
Google Friends Newsletter – May 2007
What about for webmasters/online marketers:
Want to make sure you’re taking full advantage of universal search? Here are some tips:
Google News results
If your site includes news content, you can, submit your site for inclusion in Google News. Once your site is included, you can let us know about your latest articles by submitting a News Sitemap. (Note News Sitemaps are currently available for English sites only.)News Archive results
If you have historical news content (available for free or by subscription), you can submit it for inclusion in News Archive Search.Image results
If your site includes images, you can opt-in to enhanced Image search in webmaster tools, which will enable us to gather additional metadata about your images using our Image Labeler. This helps us return your images for the most relevant queries. Also ensure that you are fully taking advantage of the images on your site.Local results
If your site is for a business in a particular geographic location, you can provide information to us using our Local Business Center. By providing this information, you can help us provide the best, locally relevant results to searchers both in web search and on Google Maps.Video results
If you have video content, you can host it on Google Video, YouTube, or a number of other video hosting providers. If the video is a relevant result for the query, searchers can play the video directly from the search results page (for Google Video and YouTube) or can view a thumbnail of the video then click over to the player for other hosting providers. You can easily upload videos to Google Video or to YouTube.Our goal with universal search is to provide most relevant and useful results, so for those of you who want to connect to visitors via search, our best advice remains the same: create valuable, unique content that is exactly what searchers are looking for.
Webmaster Central
For more particular information about where this was developed, go to SEObytheSea:
The Universal Search presented today during Google’s webcast differs from the one described in the patent application in a few ways, but one of the main concepts is shared – that data from different genres, different databases, could be shown to searchers on the same page.
Speculation is that this is a way for Google to effectively nullify marketing for organic results, however, I have a different perspective on the potential of this new change that will affect over one-half of every user on the Internet.
What is the purpose of your website? To provide information to facilitate something. If you are selling something, it is to provide the information that your customers are looking for to make the purchase decision and give them the opportunity to do this online. For me, I am offering information to facilitate thought and to help others to provide a better experience on the Internet.
So, what is Google up to?
They are trying to provide all of the information that someone might we wanting, regardless of type. They are doing what all of us are trying to do, provide the information that users want so they return. Repeat business is extremely important. This is why Google is so successful and how they intend on keeping it that way! Users are the commodity that Google needs to keep growing. Putting the user first is what we all should be doing.
Will this make SEO any more difficult than before? No! Why? Because searchers typically don’t look beyond the first couple of results unless they don’t find what they are looking for. So, the game remains the same, get to the top, being #11 still won’t bring you any substantial amount of traffic, no change. Universal search will get users used to looking through all of the results to find out what is available. This is even better because you can now show up many times on the first page. If you have a balanced attack in your marketing efforts, you will not only gravitate to the top, but you can see even more searches because you may have multiple listings on the first page of SERPs.
My advice, keep doing what is right, build your site with users in mind and take a more holistic approach to SEO.
For more information from Google about universal search, go here and here.
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- MSN Maps goes Live (pun intended)
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Nice overview. One of the statements that I thought was interesting (during the webcast) was that they were going to continue to show images at the tops of some pages, instead of inserting them somewhere within the main results like they are doing with some of the other types of specialized result.
They stated that people seemed to prefer them there, so Google is doing a lot of testing with these types of results.
I look at this mingling of results as an opportunity rather than a hardship, too.
Thanks Bill, and great overview of the pieces of this big universal puzzle.
I love the idea that users may, in-turn start looking beyond the first couple of results to see what else is available. A user is interested in the topic, so why not offer the many different facets of it? It makes perfect sense to me, and it might even get users into the habit of using additional words in their queries, which is another highlight.
This is still a big risk for Google, but I am sure that they have weighed in on the potential concerns.
Cheers!
nice view. I was thinking, besides google universal search, can social networking sites contribute to the death of SEO as well? I’m gonna blog about it soon
. Love to hear your comment about it.
Affzan,
Thanks for the comment. I don’t believe that social networking sites like MyBlogLog, Peopleized, Linkedin, Facebook and others really do anything but create additional levels that affect SEO. In my humble opinion, the only thing that these new aspects do accomplish is make it difficult for people to artificially inflate natural listings. The only real way to positively influence ranking is to build a quality website, with the user as its focal point and, if marketed correctly, it will rank well. Not because of the marketing efforts, but because it should rank well.
A very good friend has a very important response for SEO, “the right answer is still the best answer.” One other important thing to consider when analyzing new ways of search, like universal search, is that the right answer is different for each person. The engines are trying to provide the best experience for the user and so should you!
Good luck on your post, cheers!
Having been a heavy user of Google for years I can’t be less than delighted by the Universal Search because I like to dig in different media (posts, pdfs, images, video, papers…) when I am searching for any theme.
About the impact in SEO, it doesn’t seem to affect much the so called ‘white hat’ techniques. Just optimize your site to be easy to use by any kind of user and deliver quality content.
J.,
Thank you for your comment and your common sense approach!
I think that Google is doing what every web developer and SEO should be doing, designing around their users. SEO still remains an important part of web development and maintenance. Do it well and what does it matter if you are #1 in the organic results or not.
Really, what is the point of SEO?
I don’t want more crawlers to visit my website, I am in search of users!