Paris Hilton & Universal Search

You know, I ought to start doing video posts. This whole typing thing is ridiculous.

OK, so today's discovery is about Google's change in search results when you select View 100 Results vs View 10 Results.

Now, based on Google's "stable" nature, you'd think you would get consistent results.

Uh-huh. Nope. From what we've seen over the last 2 months or so, Google moves a few of the listings (aka Mentions) around when you select to view more results on the page.

Why? Search me. But I'd love your insights.

OK, here are a couple of screen shots from a current client in the language Learning market:

OK, so there are two things I'd like to point out:

1) Using RichContent, our client now OWNS 5-7 of the top 10 mentions on Google for Visit Oktoberfest. That's competing with 326,000 other mentions.

2) If you change the browser setting to show 100 Search Results, watch the immediate change:

Now we're looking at very slightly different results. But interestingly, the new additional mention is the second one down from the top result (BTW: That's Universal Search in action: a video thumbnail in the top spot). Why not down at the bottom of the SERPs?

Ask Marissa Meyer. She's the Google Guru here.

OK, so what did we learn?

1) Universal Search results take up a lot of search real estate. I believe that if I was looking to generate clicks in search, Universal Search is a great place to be (left hand position, with a thumbnail, above the fold).

2) Changing your browser settings from 10 to 100 Search Results gives different results. Now, granted, most people never look at the Top 100 Results. We do. But the reason we do we'll save for another post.

3) We kick Paris Hilton's butt. Nuff said about that.

We have some new material coming your way soon, including two whitepapers that will help you better understand Universal Search and how to leverage both new AND existing content... just about everything you have that is text, image, video, audio or XML is ripe for driving search results and ultimately, client engagement and sales.

Here's to putting your media assets to work.
Mark Alan Effinger