Universal Search by Google

17th May 2007

MSN and Yahoo! first implemented the principles of a single page that provided a variety of search results on their mobile search products. Google has done this to a limited extent for a while now. Today, though, they have more or less tried to launch the concept of a universal search results page.

Google’s Official blog post about Universal Search explains the problems they had with implementing a universal search results function based on intent detection via a short user-entered query.

The end result currently looks more like a cosmetic change than a significant change in the way results are delivered. Users now get image results, news results, related searches – not very different than before – the only change being that not only do users still see the regular options for Images, Video, News, Maps etc on the top left (no longer just above the search box), but they also get a second navigation bar above the results, with links to the most relevant associated searches.

A search for the pop star, Madonna now yields results that look like this:

Add Your Comments

Share this post via:

Email to a friend

4 Responses to “Universal Search by Google”

Follow comments on this post through the RSS 2.0 Feed

Discussion on social networks & blogs

A Closer Look At The New Ask Search | Search Daily News : 15 June 2007 at 12:35 pm

[...] The concept of “Universal Search” was first introduced by Google last month, when they started incorporating video, news and image search results within regular search results. While Google’s Universal Search offering was weak, at best, Ask have made some very nice changes that will definitely win them some cookie points. [...]
Yahoo! Integrates Video In Search Results | Search Daily News : 4 September 2007 at 9:22 pm

[...] While this new feature is a marked improvement for Yahoo! search, it is not as sophisticated as Ask or Google’s universal search results format. [...]
AccuraCast Search Daily News : 11 February 2008 at 8:28 pm

Ask.com Launches (Not So) BigNews…

New rumours doing the rounds last week, hinted at a possible collaboration between Ask.com and Digg have come true. The two have jointly launched a portal called BigNews, which is a social news site not very different from Digg, Propeller, NewsVine, Te…
Google Blends Mobile Ads In Organic Results | AccuraCast Search Daily News : 9 January 2009 at 8:33 pm

[...] To be fair, the ads are not interspersed within the regular organic results. They are, instead, placed at the end of the plain text results on a universal search results page. [...]

Add Your Comments

Please Note: We do not use nofollow, but we moderate all comments. Your comment will go live once it has been moderated. You do not need to resubmit it.

Avatars are displayed for users logged in via Facebook or can be created on Gravatar.com, and will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog.