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First, what is it? Google Universal Search is something that Google announced just over a year ago (Press Release). In a major shift, Google announced that instead of serving only text results in the natural or organic search results (SERPs), it would pull in YouTube videos, Google news results, Google images and more.
Initially it was feared that the change meant that your top keyword rankings might drop if Google found a YouTube video or news result to be “more relevant”, but instead it’s meant there is a much greater opportunity to rank for more keywords and types of content. It also means a better user experience for searches that lend themselves to video or image or other non-text results.
Initially, Google Universal Search results included:
- Web Search
- Book Search
- Images
- Local/Maps
- News
- Video
Since December, two more vertical search engines have been added to the list:
So if you aren’t thinking about how you can leverage all of your digital content, this is a good time to start!
