Google Universal Search - Luck Has Flown But Will Return

Posted on May 17, 2007
Filed Under Web News |

Google on May 16th presented a slightly different search interface, with markedly different search returns, as it deployed its long-planned Universal Search. Why this is a landmark event, and what it all means, is best told, as so often in the search world, by Danny Sullivan, the most respected commentator in the business. Go here to see Danny’s Google 2.0: Google Universal Search

This move was inevitable, and on balance we think shows good judgment in the execution. There’s griping in several quarters of course, but this will pass as change is absorbed, and really the new search returns are more in line with how the rest of the Web is looking nowadays: videos, maps, and assorted other mashups embedded in the simple homespun blog. We just need to adjust our own human filtering as we get used to the new page.

Millions of users will get further conditioning in media convergence, and Google will get a lot better at merging all the vertical searches it conducts now into the best results per query. Our initial test today - on the phone with a friend who called to recommend a new singer - made us feel like the luck had flown from our searches, but this was because we didn’t want to buy something, we wanted some free commentary About, and frankly we’d forgotten the pages are much more Consume-Now.

We already are starting to feel lucky again.

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