Earlier this year (May-ish) Google became “universal” in their search results. While SEO Pros definitely noticed it right away, many site owners have not. Recently I have found myself explaining Universal Search to several of my clients, and decided to explain it again this time in a blog in hopes of educating more visitors out there.

Basically, Universal search in Google is everything Google offers in one result. For example, let’s say you type in the phrase, “swimming pools”. Depending on how Google is displaying the results that time, you may see several photos of swimming pools, then 2-3 maps for local swimming pool companies, then 5 organic results and finally at the bottom of the page, several links to news feeds related to swimming pools. This is Universal Search. Google’s way of combining all the options they offer into one.

This doesn’t mean each time you search, you will see this. I’ve seen nothing but organic results sometimes while other times, I see AdWords, followed by 3 organic listings, 1 You Tube video 2 more organic listings, a press release and 4 archived news feeds from the NY Times.

So what does this mean to your site? It is imporant that you consider other avenues of Web Marketing other than just SEO and Pay Per Click. Online Press Releases, Articles, Images, even You Tube videos can help.  The beauty of it is most of these areas can actually be FREE to you. It’s free to create a You Tube account, Free to submit many articles and there are many low cost and even free places to submit a press release.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 7:41 am and is filed under Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.