In the United States, Google has started to roll out big changes in the way it finds and sorts results. Universal search has emerged, and will cause a huge shift in people’s searching habits when it makes its way over to the UK.

Before I go on to say what it is, and how it will affect us I should point out that, in direct contrast to many SEO experts, who see this as a possible death knell for their clients SEO programs, I believe this could be excellent news for our travel industry clients. If someone searches Google for a holiday in the Alps, we know they’re looking to book a holiday in that region. What better way to draw them in than if Google displays a promotional video recorded by your French Alps holiday company showing the sights of the region and the picturesque landscapes?

And that is (part of) what Universal Search does. Instead of Google offering you separate buttons at the top to let you search for web results, images, video, news, books, local results, etc., the search engine giant will start to list many of these options in one unified results page. An example of this can be found on the US Google Universal Search page for “Darth Vader”. It contains images, a video clip and news articles relating to the most famous of science fiction villains.

The reason why this change is so notable is because this combined, ‘universal’ list will replace the traditional organic web search in Google. Currently in the States, there isn’t a way to even filter out the extras and return to the old style unified web search, as this has replaced it on the results pages it has been implemented for.

The thinking behind this is obvious – the majority of people look no further than the main ‘web’ search function Google offers and are oblivious to the ability to search for just news or just pictures. By combining them into one, the idea is that Google will become more adept at presenting different kinds of results that are exactly what a searcher is looking for. Unfortunately, for us search engine marketers, this will require adaptation of the way we optimise websites. There will be fewer places in the top search listings available to websites, as they will be squeezed out by other types of results such as pictures, videos and news reports.

What it means for you and your businesses is that, while content remains King, it will be increasingly beneficial to push beyond simple text based content. Well optimised images, videos and news articles will help your page be represented on the Google pages when Universal Search arrives in the UK.

• For photos and images: Make sure they have keyword rich file names and ALT tags.
• For videos: Use keyword rich file names, and give each video a landing page optimised for the video’s contents.
• For news: Submit keyword rich press releases to the syndicated news feeds, with links to your web site.
• If you have a company blog: Tag it with dig or del.icio.us and submit it to Google blog search.

Taking this approach of optimising all your content, rather than just the text, will ensure your website is ready for universal search when it arrives on our shores.
Universal Search will cause a big shift when it arrives in the UK. For this reason, we at LeadGenerators have already begun work on images, forum participating, Web PR and videos for our clients. Hopefully when Universal Search appears in the UK we will see the fruit of our labour in high rankings for our clients. For further reading on Universal Search I have found this exhaustive article on Search Engine Land.