Google Universal Search has killed SEO, well ok, it hasn’t, but it has changed it. Universal Search places different types of results in with the regular search results. So a search for “Lindsay Lohan” gives you the following results. Note the pictures, and the news results talking about how her friends fear for her life. Very up to date, considering she was arrested for DUI last night.
Of course, everyone must see those very same results when they search on Google right? Well, not if you have a co-branded search site, such as those set as the default on new Dell desktops. In fact, here’s the very same search done at the very same time. Note, no pictures, no news (outside of the paid ad), and a large difference in the total number of search results returned.
I have no idea as to the usage of Dell co-branded Google searches as opposed to actual Google searches, but this just goes to prove that you shouldn’t assume that everyone is on the same page when it comes to new functionality, as they’re quite clearly not!
(note: Firefox co-branded Google searches return the exact same results as regular Google).
July 28th, 2007 - 1:47 am
The bigger sites out there that are affiliated with Google always have those same on-site google search engines. They all do the sponsored links too, dell just does it more appropriately, I’ve seen some sites that just pretty much blend them in there. There’s definitely some sort of filtering going on there too, the results are way more accurate with higher authority sites.