As one of the first presentations of the day, following a rather dry introduction to the SES San Jose Conference by Kevin Ryan, the Universal & Blended Search presentation seemed appropriate as it has been in full swing since 2007 and continues to be large component of how the top tier search engines deliver content to its users.
Universal Search was a dramatic shift away from the traditional, and now archaic, 10 blue link search result pages, to a far more relevant and dynamic SERP that includes not only direct links to websites, but also links to other forms of content such as news, images, and video.
The panel from this track included product managers from Google, Yahoo, MSN Live Search, Ask, and Cool Iris.
The importance of Universal Search is that it gives marketers, including car dealers, a greater opportunity to own more the of SERP. Take Honda Texarkana for example. Search queries that this dealer ranks well for include Louisiana Honda Dealers, which includes not only the link to the dealer’s website, but also video content from YouTube that’s displayed prominently on the first page. As this dealer is able to own more of the first page for a given keyword with various forms of content, there’s less space for their competitors.
Not only are books, images, news, and video already a large component of Universal Search, but according to Google’s Johanna Wright, new verticals including blogs and shopping will also be increasingly prominent in the SERPs.
Another important component of Universal Search that’s especially crucial to auto dealer websites is the incorporation of local data. Performing a search for Chevrolet San Diego for example will not only deliver a list of websites relevant to the search query, but it will also deliver local content including local dealers displayed within Google Maps at the top of the listings.
Delivering relevant, quality content to the end user is always the top priority for the search engines, and this will only fuel further experimentation and expansion of Universal Search. With millions of users turning to Google and other search engines each day to find content, it’s ridiculous to assume that these users aren’t looking for images, blogs, news, products, videos, and other forms of rich content aside from traditional website links. As such, the time for car dealers to expand into video and other vehicles of online communication is certainly now.
***
More SES San Jose 2008 coverage coming this week!
3 Responses to “Universal & Blended Search - SES San Jose Day 1”
Leave a Reply