Google Universal Search starts on 16 May: videos, blogs, news, images integrated
On May 18, Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Land wrote about how Google video results suddenly appeared on The search results pages of Google (via Philipp Lenssen’s Blogoscoped). Well, from the historical date of May 16, 2007, it’s not just videos from now on, but basically news, blogposts, images (we have already seen several images on SRPs too for some months), music, google checkout. local, books etc., according to Marissa Mayer, VP of search products.
Marissa in the Official Google Blog says, “Back in 2001, Eric asked for a brainstorm of a few “splashy” ideas in search. A designer and product manager at the time, I made a few mockups — one of which was for ‘universal search.’ It was a sample search results page for Britney Spears … while that Britney Spears mockup was the start of Google’s universal search vision, it was instantly obvious that this would be one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges we would face at Google.”
Check this out with Arctic Monkeys (below folder results):
I am very excited about how the new Google search is going to function, especially on the iphone once it arrives. Besides, users’ feedbacks and preferences will be the real test (I assume universal search will be more easily embraced than personalized search - mind you, also announced this year in 2007). The other issue is how these changes will affect search marketing: just think of the potential in search optimized videos attracting the eyes in the organic search results on the left side! Will they be annoying for users or found useful when searching for a product? Of course, a funny and superb and sexy product review in a video format is unbeatable (for specific branded products like ‘canon powershot g7′ which curently brings google checkout results on the top). So if universal search stays for while, demand for video SEO will surge I expect. There’s no knowing if there will ever be a phase when Google is testing videos within the sponsored links column? What do you think?
More example from Marissa:
As for Google’s New Navigational Pages, see Danny’s article with easy to grab illustrations.