Google 2.0: Google Universal Search

Posted at May 17, 2007

Google 2.0: Google Universal Search

Below Â is a wonderful recap from SearchEngineLand. It is a long article and a must read. Please click here to read the complete review
Black Robe ipod

Google is undertaking

the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a “Universal Search” system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages.

The new system officially rolls out today for anyone using Google.com and searching in English. Not everyone will see it at first, but over the course of the next several days, Universal Search should be more, well, universal. A new navigational interface has also been unveiled for Google and is covered more in the companion piece to this article, Google’s New Navigational Links: An Illustrated Guide Body Bags release

The move potentially should be a huge boon for searchers, while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialized or vertical search will see new opportunities. To fully explain the importance to both groups, I’m going to work step-by-step through the concept of vertical search engines, how they’re often ignored by searchers and search marketers alike, then how Google is going to make this content more visible through Universal Search. Full story from searchengineland Scarface divx

From Google:

The Rocky Horror Picture Show hd Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer

Back in 2001, Eric asked for a brainstorm of a few “splashy” ideas in search. A designer and product manager at the time, I made a few mockups — one of which was for ‘universal search.’ It was a sample search results page for Britney Spears that, in addition to web results, also had news, images, and groups results right on the same page. Even then, we could see that people could easily become overwhelmed with the number of different search tools available on Google — let alone those that would be created over the next few years. This proliferation of tools, while useful, has outgrown the old model of search. We want to help you find the very best answer, even if you don’t know where to look.

That mockup and early observations were the motivation behind the universal search effort we announced earlier today. And while that Britney Spears mockup was the start of Google’s universal search vision, it was instantly obvious that this would be one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges we would face at Google. Over several years, with the help of more than 100 people, we’ve built the infrastructure, search algorithms, and presentation mechanisms to provide what we see as just the first step in the evolution toward universal search. Today, we’re making that first step available on google.com by launching the new architecture and using it to blend content from Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into our web results.

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

Bonnie Burns SEO Director