Published by admin on 10 Mar 2009 at 05:59 am
Google Universal Search: 2008 Edition Re-Cap
Since its launch over a half of a year ago, Google Universal Search; a method of “blending results from variously focused search engines” has received good but at times mixed results on the promises they have made, and kept. In particular are two major changes the good people at Google expressed would come to avid users; Comparative ranking and Blending. Google has promised that these newly added backend features will better blend listings from its news, video, images local and book search engines among those it gathers from performing a “crawl” over web pages.
The move should be a “huge boon for regular users while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of vertical or specialized searches will see new oppurtunities. For example, if you created a web search for various “news headlines” then the actual headlines would not appear because Google was trying to determine if the “news results were more relevant than the web search results”. However this has all changed thanks to the arrival of Google Universal Search. In essence, the search results are just that, more universal! Google has now allowed for web search results to be measure against other types of results such as news and images, not so before. If those results turn out to be more relevant than the web search then they are automatically added to the page, thus fulfilling a comparative ranking.
Basically comparative ranking will expand your search results while the “blending” issue will “no longer subtract”. News results now will be “blended” with the top ten listings but instead with an odd number, say 4, 7, 8 or whatever, instead of being always at the top. This makes up for the “blending” part in Google’s Universal Search.
Overall most feel that this was a great move for Google to make, after hoping that the implementation works of course! However Google has expressed that there may be hiccups in the beginning and that moving forward with Google Universal Search all bugs and further streamlining will be addressed. Most articles covering the release of Google Universal and its ongoing progress stress that it should be helpful to searchers whom have simply ignored “vertical Search properties” and the good content within them. It must also be said that most have stated for awhile that there would be two major changes coming for search engines: the personalization of search results and a much more focused attention to “the growth of the vertical”.
Well it looks like that time has come and with an underlying appreciation for it as well.
