Universal Search Must be Embraced to Stay Ahead of the Competition

What is universal search? It’s the diverse means of displaying results in the SERPs to give individuals greater choice over the style of listing they choose.

The days of simpler algorithms and 1 dimensional results are long gone. Since its inception, the search landscape has continually evolved from its very early days of showing solely organic listings through to the multi-variant listings we see today encompassing a variety of clickable options.

From organic listings saw the evolution of paid listings and with it the hoards of advertisers shifting spend online to something more dynamic & measureable, and so came the inclusion of News, Local Directory listings, Google Base, Videos, Images, Shopping & Maps onto Google’s index.

As a result, and as part of a considered campaign, it’s no longer acceptable to focus on SEO & PPC and consider your search campaign to be all-encompassing. The future has to be universal coverage across all types of results.

So it’s time to dust off those old videos, tag your images appropriately, XML your news feeds with Google, submit locations to Google maps, Local Directory Listings and, where appropriate, submit articles to Google Base. Once you’ve done that, products and prices should be synched with the relevant sites, in addition to ensuring blog posts are visible in Google’s Blogsearch, and, only then, may you consider your search campaign to be all-encompassing.

But as we’ve come to learn, doing this alone is not good enough – this is the minimum effort required - optimisation of these elements is important on an on-going basis.

To give you the best possible chance of tapping into the stimulus of your varied customer base, and to continue to keep search as the most cost effective means of acquiring customers, it’s important to embrace universal search for the best returns from your campaigns.