SOM Report

Universal and blended search is here and we are about to experience a major change in search results. Strap on your helmet, put on your safety pads and put your personal protection cup in place because this is going to hurt. At Search Engine Strategies 2007 Greg Jarboe President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR says that “Universal Search is the biggest thing to happen since the Florida update in the fall of 2003.” It dramatically changes the search results that are displayed and to do that someone is going to feel pain.

 

Google's Universal Search blends video, local, news and book content into the top 10 list. Ask.com's new 3D approach is designed to make vertical results blend into a more seamless search experience. Yahoo and Microsoft also both give vertical results a presence in response to default search. That means someone must make room for these additional results and they will surely suffer. At some companies online orders will slow down, phones will go silent, people will be let go and mortgages will go unpaid.

 

But wait it is worse than just lost rankings! Gordon Hotchkiss, President & CEO, Enquiro Search Solutions Inc. at the SES Ad Testing: Research and Findings session showed a heat mapping of a new universal search results page. What it clearly showed was that the viewer looks at the image result first, then to the right of it, then just below then just above. This was on a search result that was about number four on the page. Not only will page ranking change but even the results from being on the page have shifted. Gordan talked about smashing the box and starting over and we need to do just that.