Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 12:27 PM
Yesterday, at Searchology, we unveiled exciting changes in our search results. With universal search, we've begun blending results from more than just the web in order to provide the most relevant and useful results possible. In addition to web pages, for instance, the search results may include video, news, images, maps, and books. Over time, we'll continue to enhance this blending so that searchers can get the exact information they need right from the search results.
This is great news for the searcher, but what does it mean for you, the webmaster? It's great news for you as well. Many people do their searches from web search and aren't aware of our many other tools to search for images, news, videos, maps, and books. Since more of those results may now be returned in web search, if you have content that is returned in these others searches, more potential visitors may see your results.
Want to make sure you're taking full advantage of universal search? Here are some tips:
Google News results
If your site includes news content, you can, submit your site for inclusion in Google News. Once your site is included, you can let us know about your latest articles by submitting a News Sitemap. (Note News Sitemaps are currently available for English sites only.)
News Archive results
If you have historical news content (available for free or by subscription), you can submit it for inclusion in News Archive Search.
Image results
If your site includes images, you can opt-in to enhanced Image search in webmaster tools, which will enable us to gather additional metadata about your images using our Image Labeler. This helps us return your images for the most relevant queries. Also ensure that you are fully taking advantage of the images on your site.
Local results
If your site is for a business in a particular geographic location, you can provide information to us using our Local Business Center. By providing this information, you can help us provide the best, locally relevant results to searchers both in web search and on Google Maps.
Video results
If you have video content, you can host it on Google Video, YouTube, or a number of other video hosting providers. If the video is a relevant result for the query, searchers can play the video directly from the search results page (for Google Video and YouTube) or can view a thumbnail of the video then click over to the player for other hosting providers. You can easily upload videos to Google Video or to YouTube.
Our goal with universal search is to provide most relevant and useful results, so for those of you who want to connect to visitors via search, our best advice remains the same: create valuable, unique content that is exactly what searchers are looking for.
13 comments:
Love the universal search. However, I don't like the placement of the navigation features on top. I was very used to them being under the Google logo.
always thinking like an SEO Vanessa. :)
I'm having trouble with my browser showing the google search results page correctly. My work computer Mac OS 9 with IE 5 doesn't display the navigation feature on top at all and instead displays a long blank page. All the search results have been shifted downwards so that I have to scroll down a whole page to see the results. I hope this problem gets fixed asap!
Just thought I'd throw out there that the bar across the top of the search page that says 'web' 'images' 'news' 'books' etc. is only on the 'web' page. If you want to switch from 'images' to 'news', or something, you have to go back to the main 'web' page because that link bar is gone. If only, if only, if only that strip would stay across the top of the page when away from the 'web' results. Then I think universal search would be perfect!
Hi Vanessa. I have only one question for you. You encourage us to send our news websites to be indexed on Google News. I did that in the past and every time, the Google Team rejected my request without even offering me a reason. Although I contacted the folks at Google, the answer was the same without any official reason. How can I improve my page to be indexed on Google News if I don't know the reason for the rejection. Is there any chance to get my site indexed?
I've been waiting for You guys to do that for a long time. This is great.
how do video site hosters/publishers get a thumbnail next to their listings?
UNIVERSAL SEARCH IS AWESOME!!
I also agree that the navigations on the top are too confusing. Some people I know are now using Yahoo images instead of Google because they say it's more simple.
Hi,
I've lost ranking on keywords that I've done well with for years. I'm confused about the loss. I have no expertise in these matters, I've just been lucky and tried to adhere to basic guidelines to get ranked well.
Can anyone recommend a good SEO (that's search engine optimizer, yes) that's really worth their salt and not a rip-off (or totally useless). Thanks
You can email me at
junecarter@charter.net - my site is http://www.dogbedworks.com
I've dropped from #1 to # 5 for my key word "dog beds" - but I'm still #1 for "dog bed"??? Puzzling.
And, I've totally fallend off the first page of a search for "dog crates".
Any help would be appreciated - thanks.
Does anyone have any idea how we're going to track universal search?
It's hard enough finding a reliable tool to separate paid v natural, but now I need some ideas because I don't know of any tools that carry the fully suite.
What the users has to say about it?
One friend of mine noticed that the searching is more difficult - she can't find good results because of the images, blogs and news which appears in top. So she decided to use Yahoo instead. For a normal person (non IT professional) used with the regular searching, the new way of results displaying is very difficult. Annoying. People don't want to click and choose more options if they don't have to. So for them Google new look is not a desirable one.
When google will index video like a search engine ? like blinkx/yahoo video/aol video with mrss ?
Hi everyone,
Since nearly a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Help Group.
Thanks and take care,
The Webmaster Central Team
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