Universal Search on Google
Videos, Images, News, Maps, Books and Websites in Single Set of Universal Search Results
Universal search is the new display format on Google search results. It blends all Google search engines into one.
Review of Google Universal Search Results
Google search engines:
- Blog Search
- Book Search
- Catalogs
- Code Search
- Directory
- Finance
- Images
- Local/Maps
- News
- Patent Search
- Product Search
- Scholar
- Video
- Web Search
"You almost need a search engine for all our search engines," Google's Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience. – Search Engine Land.
With the new display format Google blends results from various search engines into a single set of results.
For example, this is how a search for “Toronto taxi” looks like:
Google determined that results from its Local/Map search engine are the most relevant and displayed them at the top. The results can be located on top of the page, in the middle and on the bottom, depending on the relevancy score.
Universal Search also features phone numbers of local businesses, so in many cases searchers never leave Google to get what they need.
Another example of Universal Search is a blend of Google’s News search engine. As an example, this is what Google gives when we search for “bush”:
The link takes users to Google News search engine, where they can see a line up of news that Google collected from various media outlets.
News, like local search results, can be located on the top, in the middle and on the bottom of the page, depending on the relevancy score.
Images and videos are approached differently. Images are located strictly at the top or at the bottom of the page. According to Marissa Mayer (Vice President of “User Experience” at Google) images in the middle of the page were found to be too disruptive.
Images are pulled from Google Image search and are featured in groups of 3.
Images are subject to relevancy algorithms as well.
Video search is similar to News Search and is featured on top, middle and on the bottom. Google blends video results from Google Video [video search engine].
Book Search
Search for book titles, quotes from books, author names or generic keywords can return Google Book Search results.
When Google finds relevant keywords within books, or determines that specific books relate to the search it offers a link to its book search engine.
Finance
Google features finance information from Google Finance for company searches. A search for company name or stock name returns financial information about the company, including: today’s stock price, rise/decline in stock, open, high, low and information about the company.
It's also important to note that blending may happen from one or more of the vertical search engines. For example, Mayer talked about a search for Steve Jobs where pictures of him would be on top, news in the middle and a video clip at the bottom. – Search Engine Land
This comes at the cost of regular links to websites, usually reducing to 8-9 links per page.
Marketing Challenges
According to the eye tracking studies conducted by Enquiro Research, top left corner is the most looked part of search results. The so called “Golden Triangle”.
With implementation of Universal Search, top left area of search results is often occupied by News and Images, bringing the fact that image optimization and press release optimization are key to maximum visibility on search.
The biggest and most challenging of all changes is local search.
Local search results appear for nearly 80% of all keywords that contain “business type” and “city/state names”. For example “limo in montreal”:
Local search results feature links to websites and phone numbers of the companies. As a result, searchers may decide to stay on search engines and call companies directly, without ever visit their website.
The results are pulled from map services.
The challenge lies in satisfaction of map algorithms as well as promotion for keywords that include local city/state names. This brings up the fact that search engine optimization campaigns have 2 subsets – optimization for regular search results and optimization for local search results.
More Resources on Universal Search
You can learn more about Universal Search.
- Google 2.0: Google Universal Search – Search Engine Land
- Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer – Google Blog
- What Does Universal Search Mean for SEM? – Search Engine Watch
- Google Universal Search - is Vertical Search Space Finished? – Read Write Web
- Universal & Blended Vertical Search – Search Engine Roundtable
- Universal Search: a First Look at the Data - Comscore
- Google's Universal Search Patent Application & Assigned Patents from Infoseek – SEO by the Sea
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