Google Universal Search and how it will affect Webmasters

From what i see, webmasters are going to be seriously hurt.

IF they put all genres of data on one search, vids, pics, news, sites, blogs etc....then if you were number 4 in a search before the universal search. Then perhaps after universal search you may drop to 10 because you are competing with vids, images and blogs,news.

Am i right to assume this??? its just going to make things way more competitive. And how ill google beable to let an image more important than a website??? what did that image do to get above a site with seo done onit??

 

This is HUGE!

http://www.searchnewz.com/topstory/...eIntroducesMajorInterfaceAlgorithmUpdate.html

Quoting a bit from the article

...meanwhile search engine optimizers will find that their job has become a lot more complex. Now, instead of focusing on web search and battling others for one of the coveted Top 10 spots for a particular search term, they're going to find the Top 10 now includes results drawn from other indexes such as images, news and video. SEO's will be faced with two choices. Stick with just web search, and be content that they may only have 5-6 opportunities to be in the Top 10 on Google, or, look at ways to optimize content such as photos, videos, news items, and use a broader approach to gaining page one exposure. ​

This could turn into a SEO nightmare.

 

I saw a screenshot preview on another forum. It's too complex. I can't imagine google going ahead with this for every search. But yep, could turn into a real nightmare.

 

or a SEO opportunity

 

The top 5 is the new top 10 based on the screenshots I've seen. I havent had it appear in any searches I've done yet, though.

 

I saw this in a result the other day for one of my terms. I didn't realize at the time what it was. I did see a cool video and grab the embed code for my site though!

I was already on page 1, and my traffic went up that day. I think I was competing against fewer real sites - so my page 1 ctr went up. Just my two cents.

(I was not able to duplicate the result today... just regular top 10)

 

Here's the one I saw:

 

I saw something different. I was searched a celebrity name and included was NEWS, VIDEO, and IMAGES mixed into the first page. I will see if I can catch it again with a screen shot.

 

definitely screen shot that then. i didn't think this was the layout that story talked about - this one is too confusing as I said. google is better than this.

 

http://www.income.com/blog/2007/05/17/google-shakes-up-the-seo-world-with-universal-search/

So THAT's partly why they bought YouTube!

 

Great google single handedly made the internet use more bandwidth. There goes everybody's bandwidth.

 

SEO will never be the same...

 

I -dont- want to see the viagra videos that are about to hit youtube

 

That is just crazy.....

 

Heh, he he he.... I hadn't thought of that!

But, seriously speaking, this change is actually very good for me. I've always focused on press releases as a major method for promoting my sites. It seems like that will now be a wise thing to do - the trouble is that everyone else will think so, too!

 

lot of changes gona happen soon, i already see some changes with page rankings.

 

This is so wild! Do you know how awesome it is? The SEO tables have been turned! Ha-ha! It's like starting from scratch, in 1996, all over again!!!

Let's watch the Internet go crazy!

 

this is sscary

what will happen to our sites that we tried so hard on for the last few years! my god

 

But don't let it worry you. Just adapt.

 

This is true, but here's how an image can be more important...

The image may be placed on a properly SEO'ed page, with an appropriate ALT tag. If it's more relevant than a page, that may not be SEO'ed as well, shouldn't it receive precedence?

Yes, this will make things more competitive, but at the same time - I'm glad to see Google is doing something to make their results better. To be honest, Google searches of late returned very sucky results.