Google's new Universal search

Google made an announcement a couple days ago that they've released what they call Universal Search. Universal Search is basically a tighter integration of image, video, blog, news, and other search services into the main search results. Marissa gives more background on the concept here. For those of us paying attention to this space on a daily basis, it's not really anything too earth shattering. They've been integrating different types of results into the main search off and on for years. This announcement simply lets us know that they're serious about it and will continue to try to deliver the best results possible, regardless of whether it's a web page, video, product search, or whatever.

As a searcher, I think this is great--as long as they get it right. I don't want a bunch of irrelevant or useless stuff, but if it's what I'm looking for, that's perfect. As a search marketer, this emphasizes the importance of optimizing your presence in not just the Google web page results, but also in product search, local search, video, images, blog search, and everything else. Smart marketers are already using all these--now there will just be more competition for those top spots.

Google's "new" Universal search - Search Trends