Google Testing New Universal Shopping/Product Results Displays
While conducting some research last night I accidentally stumbled across what appears to be new Google Universal testing within organic search results. I noticed the new look and layout on several universal searches I queried such as seattle, wa (featuring both book and news universal results), 10,000 bc (featuring video universal results), ecommerce (featuring news universal results) and ball (featuring image universal results).
Notice anything I left out of the above examples? If you guessed shopping/product universal results you are right, but in case you are worried Google forgot about them, don’t be. They do have the new format for shopping results as well. While searching for several different shopping or product related keywords I noticed that Google seemed to be adding an additional horizontal grey line roughly under the third result in the natural search listings. Under the line were the universal results for shopping with a link to Google Product Search results for the same keyword query. I have seen universal results for shopping before, I have even seen them placed throughout the natural listings, even mixed into the middle at times. The thing that I immediately noticed that was different about these universal shopping results were that they were horizontally listed (similar to some horiz. Adsense layouts) rather than stacked on top of one another. Take a look at the first screenshot below.
Universal Shopping Results for ’silk trees’…
Notice how the natural listing are all vertically stacked 1-3? Then they break up the page with the horizontal grey line, followed by the horizontal shopping results, followed by a second horizontal grey line. It’s pretty funny looking and would take some getting used to for me, but I kind of like the simplistic approach to this layout. It has limited info, so it should prompt a click through to Product Search, which I like as Google has under utilized and under emphasized that vertical for a long time now (the only recently added and tweaked the Shopping link featured in main nav). Also, it has the site name (for branding purposes) and prices. The universal results stand out so they should gain attention in that position, unlike directly under the top or sidebar Adwords sponsored listings position, where they have tested universal results in the past. The only thing missing in my opinon are the little icons next to the universal results, you know, like the shopping bag and movie icons.
Any hoo, it was interesting to me so I decided to write on it to see what everyone else thought of the new testing and layout, or even Google Universal in general. I will add some additional screenshots and notes below, so when you’re finished checking those out, be sure to leave your input in the comments.
Universal Shopping Results for ‘ceiling lamps’…
Universal Shopping Results for ’silk scarf’…
Universal Blog Results for ‘handbag’…
Go ahead, try some on your own to see what different layouts and universal results you can find! If you notice anything interesting be sure to share it with all of us in the comments. I’ll give you a hint. Most searches for products, movie titles, cities, book, companies, weather, pictures and blog topics should bring up the new universal search layouts in Google.
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Add a new comment...Comment posted by Sam Stevens
April 11, 2008 @ 9:00 am
Thanks for posting this! I am not yet seeing shopping results, so I’m grateful for the heads up.
Comment posted by eCopt
April 11, 2008 @ 9:11 am
@ Sam Stevens - Glad to be of any help we can! Keep your eye out, I haven’t seen them again since grabbing these screenshots, but I expect they’ll be back in the results mix soon.
Typically testing like this is restricted to certain data centers, so you can always try those…
http://www.seologs.com/data-center-check.html
http://mcdar.net/dance/
Comment posted by slingshotseo
April 15, 2008 (4 weeks ago) @ 9:42 pm
Nice to see some fresh content eCopt! Nice catch on the screen shots! As I understand some of these tests are mere percentages of searches. For example, Yahoo is trying out Google’s ad technology on 3% of Yahoo searches. It may be limited to less that a data center. Google has so much traffic that they can get a good sample set from a very, very small percentage of searches.
Comment posted by eCopt
April 19, 2008 (4 weeks ago) @ 8:42 am
@ slingshotseo - Hey thanks man. Appreciate the welcome back and input regarding Google testing. You are right on about them using small portions of queries to test, sorry I didn’t mention that in the post or first comment, glad you filled in that blank for me. Look forward to more comment insight from you in the future.
Comment posted by Best Shopping Cart
May 6, 2008 (6 days ago) @ 8:48 pm
eCopt, I tried a few searches and could not get the universal version to come up. I’m sure if I kept hunting I could though. But honestly I don’t exactly know what Universal Search is. (please don’t flame me)
I wont make you explain it though. I’ll google it for myself and thanks for an interesting article.
Comment posted by Internet Marketing
May 7, 2008 (5 days ago) @ 12:28 am
Does anyone know the conditions for which universal search turns up instead of the vanilla search?
Comment posted by eCopt
May 7, 2008 (5 days ago) @ 5:02 pm
@ Best Shopping Cart - Hey, yeah, the results are spotty at the moment, they only show on a handful of queries in certain regions or across certain centers. Keep trying, I’m sure you’re bound to get one eventually.
As far as Universal goes, no worries about any type of flaming here, where no question is a dumb question!
Universal Search is basically a blended search results page where the user not only views general web search results for their query, but also results from other search verticals, such as product results, images, blogs, stock quotes, weather and anything else really.
You can see Universal Search in action on Google’s test site… http://www.searchmash.com (the name refers to a mashup of search results). Within it, you can see videos, images, blogs and wikipedia entries.
To see more of what Google is testing, check out this nifty flash version…
http://www.searchmash.com/flash/search/
Hopefully that sheds some light on the subject, if not, you can always try the standard glossary definitions.
Comment posted by eCopt
May 7, 2008 (5 days ago) @ 5:11 pm
@ Internet Marketing - The conditions vary depending on the query. Typically the query has to be a close enough match to a vertical search to trip the universal results. For instance, company names are common queries to trip the results. Since a person searching for a company could be looking for their services, their address, their blog, a map to them, videos or anything else they offer.
Try,”google” or “yahoo“. Notice how the news results show up half way down? Some have stock quotes etc.
Try “general motors“, you get news and blog results.
The term “godaddy” used to produce video results to their funny commercials, etc.
So you see, the conditions vary depending on the original search query. Some produce universal results, some are going to be traditional results. It’s hard to say exactly what conditions are used from vertical to vertical due to Google not wanting to publicize that information. And to make things more difficult, those results usually only display on a certain percentage of queries throughout the day, so at this time, there’s no real accurate way of telling. I think as they begin to move closer to full universal, it will become more evident, but for now, we’ll just have to speculate.
Hope that helps. Thanks for the comment.
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