Comments on: This whole universal search thing from Google

By: Dario Salvelli’s Blog » Blog Archive » Google Universal Search ed il futuro del search engine

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:52:52 +0000

[...] pagina?), Google Universal Search, che analizzi anche contenuti come i video, le mappe. Diversi si chiedono come avvenga l’integrazione di diversi tipi di ricerca e contenuti, come verranno mostrati [...]

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:06:10 +0000

Still 10 results per page (with default prefs) so your vid is going to push down that #9 spot. But something that might be relevant here is OneBox. That’s the box they sometimes show for local searches, stock quotes etc. You see it in the UK (but we dont get local search in Ireland – we’re not local enough I suppose). Now OneBox isn’t considered 1 of the 10 results so if you can get into that you would still retain the #9. I imagine you’re going to see more going into OneBox also.

I think the main thing about uni-search is that it is more likely that Google is going to merge in video/images etc so there are going to be less ‘organic’ (text-based) positions left on page 1. The upside is that if you can get your images/vid optimised for your targeted phrase then you are probably going to rank far easier than competitive text-based results (until, at least, everyone cops on and starts optimising their rich media).

[OT – I’d watch the video but YouTube is still blocked in Thailand)

By: Eoghan

Eoghan — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 12:03:33 +0000

“…how in the feck are you going to climb that ladder once again…?”

Any discussion of the whole ‘universal search’ thing and its potential impact on search engine rankings should also take into account the ongoing and parallel shift towards personalisation in search. With personalised search the search engine (for logged in users) analyses over time your searches, what results you choose to click through and so forth to build up a better idea of what you are looking for. On the basis of all this it serves up a set of results personalised to you and what it perceives to be your needs (for example it may work out from your search behaviour that you are a fan of royalty and so if you search for ‘queen’ it will then go and rank web pages for the Queen Lizzie higher than pages about Freddie mercury and co). A consequence of this is that the top ten results of a personalised search page may contain results that would otherwise not appear in the top 10, 20 or 30 results of a ‘vanilla’ non-personalised search result page. So while universal search may mean for a webmaster that some of his/her previously high ranking pages are pushed off the top ten page, personalisation may also mean that, for users getting personalised search results, other pages get a lift and end up for the first time in the top 10 results.

“it might well worth be considering working harder on your videos and photos and so forth”? Honestly, except for the biggest, best resourced sites, I’d say ‘no’. Optimising sites for text alone is a toughie. Webmasters should play to their strengths – if your strength is text-based content, then keep focused on that. If you are not an expert in generating video- or image-based content then don’t even try. There will be 10s of thousands who will be better then you.