What is Google Universal Search and how to navigate it?

Today’s post is from eCommerce Guide and was written by Michelle Megna. Google’s new universal search format, which blends news, blogs, video, books and the company’s other vertical searches into the main query results, is now a few weeks old, and e-tailers are wondering what impact this will have on their search engine marketing and optimization. We’ve talked to a few search experts to find out. The good news is that the adjustments you need to make aren’t that complex. The bad news is that it does mean you have to work harder to get high rankings on the main results page.

Now that the main search page is going to include video, local listings and so on, it will be more difficult to get listed in the top 10, because there will generally be only three or four “regular” result slots left. This means e-tailers must expand their marketing so that they are included in the other platforms, said Bill Hartzer, who manages the search engine marketing division of MarketNet Inc., is an administrator at Search Engine Forums and founder of the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association.

And, while competing with fresh content from these other sources may seem overwhelming, Hartzer sees it as an opportunity for Web shop owners to get an edge over the competition — if they act quickly.

“It means that site owners need to start paying attention not only to the title tags and copy, but they must branch out to take advantage of these other platforms,” said Hartzer. “For e-commerce sites who get in on optimizing images, press releases, local search, video, they will get the competitive advantage because most of them aren’t paying attention to this stuff, not many are doing it, they’re focusing on regular ranking. It doesn’t take a whole lot to get listed in the other areas and if you do you’ll have that edge.” Click here to read the rest of this article.