Universal Search - It's Not Universal
Posted On: 2007-07-03
I had to smile a couple of weeks ago when Google launched their new universal search, not because of what the implications are for anyone interested in search engine optimisation, but because it really does send the wrong message to a lot of people who depend on traffic from search engines.
You might think that something as simple as a title is hardly going to send the wrong message but titles are very important and this one suggests that Google now has a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone on the Web. So if you're thinking that search really is universal ... that people everywhere are using search in the same way as every one else then perhaps you need to think again because search is definitely not universal.
Now I'm not American so I could be wrong but it seems to me that lots of people in the United States search for a lot of goods and services online. The other day I was surprised at what Google returned when Steve typed 'pizza in Reno' into Google.com. I knew that local search was becoming important in the United States (and it's something that Steve talks about all the time) but I didn't realize just how important it was.
I had never seen Google Maps appear at the top of the search engine results page before but now I have and now I realize how important local search is ... in the United States. But here in Australia it's not that important - when I type 'pizza in Blacktown' (a well-known suburb of Sydney where I used to live) I don't see a similar looking results page at all. I don't see the Google Maps because Google hasn't introduced that service to Australia - all I see is the 'old style' search engine results page.
At the same time try playing around with generic search terms that are not necessarily geo-specific. Enter them into the different variations of Google such as Google.com.au, Google.co.uk and some of the other flavors of Google and then compare the results to what you get for the same terms in Google.com.
They're not always the same and sometimes the variation can be quite wide. We have one search term that we're chasing at the moment and there's a variation of 25 places between Google.com and Google.com.au.
So from the provider side of the equation search is not universal.
Search is not universal from the user side of the equation either. People in the United States use search differently to people in Australia and people in Australia will quite likely use search differently to people in the United Kingdom. People within different parts of the country and different socio-economic groups will use search differently too.
Even people in areas that have a high number of Internet users will use search in different ways to others in similar areas. From experience we can tell you that few people in this town look online for providers of local goods and services even though a reasonable number of small businesses have websites. We can also tell you that the number of people searching online for goods and services in Australian capitals is growing but still nowhere near what it is in similar cities in the United States.
Last week Search Engine Land published a piece called 'The Slums of Search' in which the author suggested that Canadians are three to four years behind Americans in adopting search and the same period probably applies to Australians too.
So search is definitely not universal and to be fooled by the name into thinking that it is can definitely lead to problems. For example if we believed that search was really universal then we would look at where we appeared in Google.com.au (the default Google for Australian surfers) and think that everyone around the world was seeing our client at position number five. We wouldn't even think of going to Google.com and checking the listing and so we wouldn't notice it at position number 30.
Yet this is a tourist town that sees lots of overseas visitors and they're very important for our client. Being in position 30 is not going to bring them any of the tourist dollars that they're seeking so that's something we're going to have to work on ... and we haven't even thought of checking Google.co.uk or the European versions of Google yet.
But that's just one of the problems with universal search. We should also be thinking about the way people search, the terms that people search for and how they differ from country to country. If you're selling your product to the world and you want search engine traffic those are all important issues that you have to consider.
Exactly how those issues will impact on you is something that only you can answer but don't be fooled into thinking that Universal Search is universal ... because it isn't.