Comments on: Google’s Universal Search and SEO

By: pittfall

pittfall — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 13:46:18 +0000

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!

By: J. Vallejo

J. Vallejo — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 22:06:58 +0000

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.

By: pittfall

pittfall — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 03:22:52 +0000

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!

By: affzan

affzan — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:24:49 +0000

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.

By: pittfall

pittfall — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:40:40 +0000

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!

By: Bill Slawski

Bill Slawski — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:24:31 +0000

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.

By: Blog Talk Archive | WebProNews

Blog Talk Archive | WebProNews — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Clean Energy and Green Technology at Google Google Launches Plug-In Hybrid Car Initiative and Unveils Solar Installation Google Allows Webmasters to Report Spam in Index Google Improves Calendar Google Launches Universal Search Google Acquires FeedBurner Google Gears Brings Online Content to Offline Applications Hot Trends Added to Google Trends Google Improves Analytics Google Acquires DoubleClick Google Working with LG on the new