Universal Search - Google’s Plan For the Future
Recently Google has announced a major change in the way the search engine will deliver results. There was a time when you had to click an extra button to see a map, video or image but now all of these results will be rolled together. When searching for ??Darth Vader? you will see Image results, videos, related key terms and news all within the organic results, making media much more accessible. The expansion further consolidates Google??s lead in the search market and will give users more targeted results, as well as more targeted ads. Vertical search will integrate vertical search results into Google??s organic search results, which should greatly increase relevancy.
Since Google??s use of SearchMash it??s clear that integrated search results are coming. Universal search will include Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into web results. Additionally there will be new navigational elements to help guide the user. There will be a contextual navigation to help users narrow their search. For example a search for ??Moby Dick? will only yield one contextual search which will be ??books? if there were movies or images however they would also be included. Also there will be a universal navigation bar to make it easier to access Google services like Gmail or Analytics.
Many question Google??s improvement on success concerting that Google??s motive is for targeted advertisements rather than usability. But personalized search isn??t anything new, search engines have been working on it for years and only now is it gaining speed. Ask.com launched Ask X, a personalized search engine that includes media in the search results. Also the user created search engines known as Swicki??s do a similar thing. Clustered and vertical search results aren??t new, Clusty has been doing it for awhile. As of yet there is no major response from Google users but this likely means user favor quicker searching. ??Our goal is not just to get people to spend more time on Google; it??s for them to be able to accomplish more with Google,? says Sergey Brin says. ??We actually want them to get more tasks done faster.? From here search engines can being to do amazing things, and search engine optimization will never be the same.
William Atkin Utah Search Engine Optimization