What Exactly Are The Concepts Of Universal Search?
Written by Phillip Guye Tuesday, 12 April 2011 08:10
Universal Search recently become one of the most widely talked about topics in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google is, once more, a responsible party in this elevated exposure. Ask was one of the first search engines to introduce universal search, and a number quickly followed suit. It wasn't really until Google launched a similar aspect to its search portfolio that the online marketing industry stood up and took notice.
What is Universal Search?
Search engines have, for years, indexed textual web pages. When a surfer searches using a particular keyword a list of web pages that are deemed relevant to that topic are displayed. For years, search engines have displayed only textual pages because that is all they have really been capable of indexing. Universal search looks at far more than just the text on a page to be able to generate its results. Images, video, blog posts, and news content is among the results now shown.
Universal or Blended Search?
Ask 3D is referred to as universal search since it shows another list of results for each of the different media and page types. Google Universal in comparison is more of a blended search since it mix together all the results into the now-familiar list of 10 results. These new search portals mean a new dawn of search for the average web user. It's also the same for the marketers. Website owners face problems, challenges, and potential opportunities.
- Problems can arise for pages that had previously ranked well in the search engine results. Chances are those pages would have been pushed down the results by video, images, blog posts, and news items.
- The challenge is to create such a rich variety of content, and to enhance the resulting media for the search engines' benefit. It could mean more work, but the tough truth is that it is necessary work for the astute webmaster that wishes to traverse the search engine results.
- Needless to say, opportunities exist for those that are going to do the work. Video clips are remarkably easy to make and need not consist of more than a merchandise being used, or a designer referring to the biggest benefits of a new product. Add some audio, and edit the images, and you have a video clip ready for universal and combined search.
There are lots of other aspects of optimizing for universal search. Ideally you recognize that you need to produce, optimize, as well as promote all the media types that your customers, visitors as well as search engines will respond to. Be optimistic. Never look at this as more work on your part, but as a new opportunity to develop richer content and explore new marketing avenues. As you create new content in numerous media types you will be setting yourself up for the future and building a sustainable, searchable infrastructure which will keep you going way into the future.
About the Author:
Video Marketing is a tactic that allows and motivates individuals to pass along marketing clips about products and services. This could be done through Social Media Marketing, a powerful approach that will give you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic by promoting your website or organization through social media channels.