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It seems every time Google makes a change to its search engine the world takes notice, and why not? Google is the biggest search engine on the planet, so if Google does make a change to even the smallest algorithm it uses, everyone should sit up and takes notice. Google revealed to the world its new Google universal search on May 16, 2007. What Google claimed it would do was integrate, no the correct term they used was 'weave'; the new Google universal search into the existing Google search engine. First things first Google universal search is not a major change in any algorithm, or in no way means that the criteria in which search results are displayed has changed. So if you are search engine optimizer you can heave a sigh of relief (at least from the algorithm point of view). So then what is Google universal search? Well the name is pretty self explanatory, what Google plans to do, is bring you pretty much everything associated with a keyword when you look for a particular keyword. For example if you were to type in 'Steve Jobs' in Google, you will notice there is a search result from You tube displayed among the web results. This is just the beginning of what Google is hoping to achieve, what Google is planning to do eventually is this: for example when you type in 'Ferrari' in Google, there will be a photograph, a new article, and if possible a video of a Ferrari that shows up on the main page of the Google search. In either case, the intended idea is to bring not just web results that are link based, but truly multimedia rich results like images, videos and even recent books that are based on the keyword or person you are searching for. Today June is coming to an end, and still only a handful of keywords are actually showing what the Google universal search wanted to achieve, as mentioned earlier in the article instead of making a 360 degree switch in the search engine, Google has chosen to slowly update and integrate the Google universal search results with the existing algorithms and search criteria it is running, from what I can see, it might be quite a while before the impact of Google's innovation the Google universal search (or GUS as it is being called) will be felt. Currently Google indexes over 220 different formats like HTML, PDF and Microsoft office extensions, if you notice sometimes the keyword you search for actually brings up a PDF document as a search result. In fact just type in 'press release pdf' in Google and the first page results are all pdf files. This is just a taste of what Google universal search hopes to do by including multimedia extensions in its search results. As is the case with almost all new innovations with search engine technologies, Yahoo too has launched oneSearch which on the surface looks similar to Google Universal search. However I feel Google is already a step ahead of Yahoo as Google's results are actually relevant and they are based on their importance (as they should be), where as Yahoo oneSearch actually offers the first video or image that is associated with the keyword, irrespective of its importance to the keyword. How Google universal search will change SEO The speculation is rife all over the search engine optimization world, there might be some serious changes to be made to SEO, others claim that there should be no difference at all in the way search engine optimization works. However there is one thing that all search engine optimization gurus believe in is, that there will be a change in approach required when it comes to search engine optimization, what the degree of change in that approach will be is still not apparent. Most search engine optimizers believe, that by adding multimedia and MIME aspects to the search engine results Google has actually added to the learning curve of search engine optimizers, instead of just learning how to optimize search engine results now search engine optimizers will have to learn how to optimize for videos, MIME extensions etc. Although there is still no corroborative evidence to suggest if this addition to the learning curve will come into effect any time soon, but by looking at the impact Youtube is having on the search results, a typical optimization of a video would be something like this. Lets take for example a company wants to optimize for the keyword “Used Cars”, search engine optimizers will have to come up with clever ways to upload videos in Youtube, that are tagged with the keywords used cars, so when the Google universal search is implemented, apart from a website, a couple of videos too will show up that are pointing to the website. What search engine optimizers will basically end up doing is having a more holistic approach to search engine optimization. Agreed that not all keywords can have a video associated with it, then in that case there are so many documents, or articles that can be uploaded related to the keyword, all in all it will boil down to how creative, and 'ahead of the game' search engine optimizers can be. There is no denying that every day Google, is making minor changes to improve, and make the search results as personalized as they can be, but so far search engine optimizers have managed to stay on top of the changes, and have been constantly educating themselves to stay in touch with Google's changes. At the end of the day I feel that it will boil down to being creative, and having a more holistic approach to search engine optimization. What the overall impact of Google universal search on SEO will be only time can tell.
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Rishi Modi is CEO of SubmitEdge and also the Author of this Article. He is also Certified SEO Professional and heads a team of 23 trained SEO Team. His Website Offers Different SEO Services Like Directory Submission and Article Submission Service.
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