ClickZ News - Google's Universal Search

While reading the required class blogs, I recently found an interesting article on ClickZ News. The article, called "Branding, SEO Implications for Google Universal Search" discusses the marketing implications for Google's new Universal Search. Google Universal Search was launched on May 17, and will eventually provide a search results page with images, videos playable on the results page, maps, and more. The "richer" search results page will have major effects on internet advertisers. Soon, advertisers will optimize videos so they appear in Google's results. It is likely that a "richer" form of multimedia content will appear higher in the search results, changing SEO. The ClickZ article also speculates as to what this means for its paid advertisements. "Brand advertisers" will likely wish to pay for advertising with multimedia content, however this could have an impact on advertisers already using AdWords.

I thought that this article was very interesting, and brought together a lot of the concepts we discussed in class throughout the semester. Google's new search results will definitely have a major impact on search. When videos can be played directly from the search results, this will change the idea of search engines being used in order to get to another place on the web. If Google eventually offers paid advertisements with multimedia content, this could take away from the opportunities small advertisers have with AdWords. An advertiser with a small budget who wishes to advertise using AdWords will likely be less effective when competing against advertisers in the same category using flashy videos. It will be interesting to see the effects that Google's new search engine results will have on search as a whole down the road.