Anyone involved in the search industry will know that Google has rolled out “Universal Search” today to the masses. There have been countless articles on this subject in the last few weeks, some of them touting the service and others screaming about what a travesty it is. I hope to clarify a few things.

Google has, for a long time now, had many vertical search properties like Google Maps, Image Search, Product Search, etc. These are places that you can do a search with a specific purpose, like finding directions, looking for someone’s photograph, etc. Google has also been serving up results from its vertical search properties within the default Google Web Search, which is a horizontal search property where you can search for anything and everything. These vertical results were shown within an area called the Onebox. The Onebox is displayed at the top of the organic results and just beneath the top paid results, in prime Google real estate. The problem was that people were not clicking on these One Box results as much as Google would have liked. The reason not many people clicked on Onebox results was that people respond to K.I.S.S. No, not the rock band! K.I.S.S. stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. I mean look at the Google homepage, it does not get any more simple than that.

Google now feels that they need to incorporate all of their vertical search properties right smack dab in the middle of the organic SERP pages in order to gain exposure for them. So now there are results with video, news articles, images, books, etc. within the top ten organic results. That means less Web search results and more vertical search results. There is not even the option to search using only the Web page search. And that means that top organic rankings are even that more important!!!

The Problem

A while back I came across an interesting article that noted some of the odd news sources in Google News. Sites like Boing Boing and Himalayan Times. Yes there are sites like the NY Times and others, but they all have one thing in common. They are all heavy Google Advertisers! So, in essence, Google is using their vertical search property to re-direct traffic to more Google advertising. That is a serious problem because it means that Google can no longer be trusted to provide the best, unbiased, results to the end user. And that is what search is supposed to be all about. But we should have all seen it coming from the day that they went public! A public firm has only ONE purpose, to make money for its shareholders. That was just the beginning of the end for Google organic results.

Now, with Universal Search, Google has the opportunity to direct even more traffic to Adwords and Adsense because these vertical search properties, some of which are laden with Google advertisers, are now integrated into the organic results. This means increasing PPC costs across the board as organic results are going to be at a premium.

The Solution

Now, more than ever, it is going to be important to get your site(s) optimized properly. If you were thinking about engaging in a search engine optimization campaign, or increasing your current campaign, do it! Getting the top positions is going to be even more valuable, and of course even more difficult. If you found yourself on page 1 in the 8, 9, or 10 spots for keywords you could now be bumped to the second page. So by all means, kick it up a notch and GET TO THAT FIRST PAGE! Buy some extra linking, get some more optimized content, if you are that close to the first page you should definitely be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. You just need that last jolt to get you there.