Google Universal Search

Google’s Universal Search feature now integrates news, maps, books, blogs, images, videos into its main search results. It now includes videos from youtube.com and video.google.com.

Marissa Mayer from Google Blog emphasizes…

“With universal search, we’re attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results.”

Here are several examples to show you how Google Universal Search works:

Example 1

If you do a search for “steve jobs” in Google, the image results are displayed at the top of the window. There is also links at the top to News and Video sites. A few entries further down you will see a video of Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech included in the main search results.

Example 2

A search for “python” will give you links for “web,” “blogs,” “books,” “groups,” and “code.”

Example 3

A search for “downtown los angeles” displays “web,” “News,” “Maps,” and “Images.”

To help with integration and navigation, Google also introduced a new universal navigation bar at the top of all Google web pages to provide easier navigation to your favorite Google products, such as Gmail.

How can you use Google Universal Search to get high rankings for your own website?

Create video and news that centers around the topics of your web site. Be sure to include targeted keywords in the meta data of your video descriptions. Do the necessary keyword research first so you know what keywords to include in your video descriptions.

How does Google Universal Search compare with the other Search Engines?

“How does it stack up against search sandboxes from competitors like Yahoo!’s Alpha, Ask’s Ask X, Microsoft’s Imagine Live, and even Google’s own test bed Searchmash? […]

I found Searchmash to be the best. It has a straight forward design (like Google), great results (like Google), and presented information in an easy to consume format. Yahoo!’s Alpha was not far behind in any of those respects, however.”

Resources

Danny Sullivan’s in-depth article
http://searchengineland.com/070516-143312.php

Google Blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/universal-search-best-answer-is-still.html