Impact of Google Universal Search
As Google continues to rollout Google Universal, the search industry is starting to wake up to major shake up. The placement of content from other Google products within the main natural search results creates a host of issues – all of which is yet to unfold.
So, what are the main concerns
• For commercial queries, insertion of media and image listing will push your rankings further down the page. And if the searcher was really looking for ‘shoes’ and not the YouTube video, the top results are likely to get even more clicks.
• Google get’s to push more Google content.
• Increase adwords revenue
• For a brand – a brand search is going to expose a lot more about your brand than the affiliate listings. Having a search strategy which looks to owning your brand space across the Google network becomes even more important.
• Affiliates and anyone bottom feeding on brand traffic is going to find the going getting tougher.
So what about the end user? Depending on the type of query which triggers Google universal, you could have a great user experience or a very poor one. Many of the other engines do offer related content for specific queries, but these are generally kept out of the way. This is a very bold move by Google, and guess we’re all going to have to wait and see till it’s fully rolled out.
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I think they have pushed it too far at the moment tbh