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Table of Contents
Introduction
How will the universal search affect customers?
What does this mean to advertisers?
What can I do to take advantage of universal
search?
Universal searching is the next evolution of
search engine technology that will change the way users and advertisers
search the Internet. Universal search technology has the potential to
completely revolutionise the paid search market as each search will draw
on all the search engine's databases, and the search results will be
blended returning, in addition to the traditional text-bases results:
• Images
• Video
• Audio
• Podcasts
• Blogs
• RSS feeds
• Maps
• News
The blended search results will mean that advertisers
will have to rethink their search strategies, markets and tools.
How will the universal search affect customers?
The blended search results delivered by universal searching
means that the consumer may perform fewer searches to find the
information they require as the results are drawn from the search
engine's news, images, maps, video and other databases. This means that
instead of doing one search to find images on a subject, another search
for textual information and a third for videos on the subject, all these
results will be returned from the one search query.
| Why
will universal search have an impact on how consumers use search
results? |
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Retina scans have been used to map where on a computer page the
eye looks and how it tracks across the page. It showed that on a
conventional search page, like the ones we are used to, the eye
gravitates to the top left-hand corner of the page. But, with
Universal Search results introducing images to the page, the eye
is drawn away from the “golden nugget”, the “golden nugget”
being the most popular area of the page to look at.
As you can see from the picture on the left, with unblended
results, the eye automatically tracks to the top left-hand
corner (marked with A). |
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Initially,
images will only appear in natural search results, and not paid
ads. So, how will this affect the way people will interact with
search results? The human brain can take in information from an
image about 1000 times faster than it can from text. For that
reason, the eye is instinctively drawn to the images on the
page, rather than the top left-hand corner of the search
results. Images that can draw the consumer’s eye are an obvious
advantage for a brand.
In the picture on left, you can see how the heat mapping has
changed and is now centred around the image (indicated by C) and
the top left-hand corner, doesn't get much attention at all. |
What does this mean to
advertisers?
Initially images will only appear in natural searches
and not paid ads. This means advertisers will need to develop their web
sites with content that has been optimised for natural searches. This
will supplement their paid ads and maximise their exposure in search
results.
The inclusion of social media sites such as YouTube,
Facebook, MySpace and blogs in high ranking positions on search results
pages opens up a new area for paid advertising as these companies look
to increase their ad revenue. The research firm Research and Markets
predict that in 2010 over $2 billion will be spent on social network
advertising in the US, opening a huge market potential for savvy,
universal search aware advertisers.
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