Effects of Universal Search

By Aisling Blake

Account Director, Interactive Return

In June’s issue, Interactive Return’s Michael Finnegan addressed Google’s recent launch of Universal Search.  Having just returned from SMX London, where the buzz about Universal Search could not be missed, I had to explore this topic even further.

Universal Search combines all kinds of search results, including news, images, video, local and plain old text results.  Although not entirely prolific at this stage, Universal Search results are becoming increasingly more common on the search engine results pages (SERPs).  One major effect this has had so far is on the way users view and process the content on the SERP.

Research has proven that users scan a SERP starting at the top left hand corner and across to the sponsored listings and then work their way down the page.  Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro Research referred to this as the Golden Triangle in the ‘Search Ad Testing & Tactics” session at SMX.

However, a SERP that contains universal search results immediately turns this idea upside down.  Gord continued to explain the effect this would have on the Golden Triangle and the following pattern emerges.  When a universal search results page appears an image or video result is displayed among the listings.  The user’s eye is automatically drawn to this image and the normal scanning pattern changes.  The image now becomes the focal point of the entire page, rather than the top left hand corner.  Scan patterns move around this image causing previously hot areas to be glossed over.  Organic listings at the top of the page may become less important, as the user now focuses on the listings that surround the new focal point – the image. 

As a result of Universal Search the climb to get to the top of the organic results for a particular search query becomes more interesting.  If an image is half way down the results page, and although the organic listings above and below this image may only have a ranking of six or seven, they become more noticeable and therefore have priority placement rather than listings at the top of the page.

The continued growth of universal search will continue to change the way users process search engine results.  Perhaps it will mean that being number one isn’t as significant as it used to be, but one thing for certain is that a site should continue to be as search engine friendly as possible.  Optimising textual content for the search engines is now matched by the importance of optimising image and video content.  By optimising all aspects of a site there is more chance now that just one site could take up a large portion of real estate on the search engine results page, pushing competitors out of view.