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.

In addition to the duplicate content issues I found, I also wanted to bring to light the many Froogle pages that still remain in Google’s index, despite being replaced by Google Product Search back in April 2007. Right now, if you type froogle.com into your address bar or even froogle.google.com, you’ll be redirected to the new product service at www.google.com/products. This is common, especially when changing domains or file locations, and it is good practice to use these types of 301 redirects, as Google stated about a year ago on the Webmaster Central blog.

Many of you are already aware that Froogle used to be the product search site powered and operated by Google and that it has now been replaced by Product Search, however it appears that Google may be having a tough time getting older Froogle subdomain (froogle.google.com) pages out of their index (or updated), including the Shopping List pages that Google users have been creating since Product Search used to be Froogle.

The screenshot above shows the number of English results still remaining in Google’s index using the search query site:froogle.google.com. It is important to remember that these are only English results, there are other foreign language pages on the Froogle subdomain, but I chose not to use them in my example as they may be using them in way that I am not aware of.

As I started sifting through the different results that are showing up, I noticed quite a few interesting things, including duplicate content pages for the Google Directory that show up under a froogle.google.com subdomain and many Google Shopping List pages still residing on froogle.google.com subdomain. I can understand that Google has yet to update the Shopping List pages, it’s not that popular of a service, but in my opinion, they should as it’s up to them to practice what they preach and set the bar for the rest of us. Rather than using the froogle.google.com/shoppinglist/ location I would 301 redirect those pages to www.google.com/products/shoppinglist, and more specifically either the www. or non-www. version of those pages, with or without the trailing slash (easy fix).

But what about the Google Directory results on the froogle.google.com subdomain? I can’t understand why these pages even exist as Froogle was never really part of Google Directory (powered by DMOZ). I was amazed to see that they are still indexed, but I didn’t think too much of it since I realize those pages may not have been crawled again recently, however when I clicked on one, I was not redirected, I was taken to a Google Directory results page on a froogle.google.com subdomain, weird. Take a peak below.

1. First, go to http://froogle.google.com/Top/Shopping/
2. Next, take away the froogle part and go to http://www.google.com/Top/Shopping/

What you see is duplicate content. In this instance it’s the exact same page, only they reside under different file locations. You typically see this with the www. version and non-www. version (which Google does right, try http://google.com/Top/Shopping/ ) rather than subdomains. The old pages (froogle) should be redirected to the existing Google Directory pages instead of both existing. Not only that, but many of the froogle.google.com pages have been crawled lately which tells me that this has most likely been overlooked by engineers (whoops).

As I began digging deeper I was stunned to see that not only are their froogle.google.com pages still in Google (quite a few of them) and half of them are duplicates of the Google Directory AND Open Directory AND anyone else who uses DMOZ data, but their are also duplicate pages for the MAIN Google Product Search page (www.google.com/products) still indexed. Take a peak below.

1. First, go to http://froogle.google.com/products
2. Next, go to http://froogle.google.com/index.html
3. After that, take away the froogle part and go to http://www.google.com/products

They are all the same pages and the first two are considered duplicate content. Same as the Google Directory example, it’s mostly common with www. and non-www. versions of the domain (this time Google doesn’t do it right, try http://google.com/products and also try http://google.com/products/). Notice the trailing slash at the end of the last one. All of those versions should be 301 redirected back to the main version at www.google.com/products (with no trailing slash, or whatever they choose to use and stick with).

I can’t understand why they would let this go or overlook it. It seems like they are preaching a bunch of things they don’t actually practice across all of their services. Hopefully this post gets picked up by the right people at Google and they actually listen to some of this feedback, it’s not right to penalize sites for duplicate content, when they have the same issues themselves. You can see by searching for “products” that Google is number one and two in the results. The first one is the main page and the second is duplicate with a session variable appended to the end.

On Sunday, after picking up Slingshot from the airport, we headed down to the Metropolitan Cafe’ to take advantage of Carlos’ Pre-Funk invite. There weren’t many that attended the pre-funk, but it was still great to get some time to know him a little more and pick his brain (he’s a really brilliant landing page optimizer who got second in the SEOmoz landing page design contest).

After a few drinks on Sunday, we woke up the following day and headed down to UW for the Training Seminar (started at 9am). The event itself was held in a lecture hall on University of Washington’s campus that had the capacity for about 100+ attendees. Literally every seat was filled, but I got there early enough to grab one on the plush couches that lined the walls of the hall, lucky me! There was coffee and donuts for all the attendees, thanks Mozzers.

Once all the seats were filled and everyone had their fill of coffee/donuts, Rand kicked off the show with An Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Algorithms. Much of this portion of the presentation was review for me, but there was great insight and information for any search marketer, whether beginner or advanced. I can always find a few gems of knowledge, even for topics I have researched to death.

After the quick Intro to SEM and Algos, Rand discussed Best Practices for Search Engine Friendly Design, How-to properly conduct Keyword Research, How-to properly Target Keywords and wrapped up with Content Creation Strategies and ideas. I was impressed by how much Rand shared on these topics. A lot of it he has been talking about on the blog for years, but much of the presentation was updated to include newer strategies, ideas, insights and valuable knowledge geared towards helping site owners, webmasters and marketers improve in important areas.

The second half of the day was dedicated to Social Media, Blogging and finally a discussion on Analytics. After each session, Rand opened up the floor for QandA, giving all attendees the chance to ask specific questions about specific topics or their own sites. Not only did Rand open up the floor for questions, but he also encouraged the audience to ask questions during the presentation, which I have found to be a hard thing to do in past presentations I have done. Rand did an excellent job managing all his content, keeping track of time on each subject and giving enough time for attendees to get their questions in. At the very end, he opened up the floor yet again for anyone to ask questions about any topic of search marketing.

My favorite part of the event was, of course, the AFTERPARTY. SEOmoz held the afterparty at Jillians, a fun bar, game room and restaurant. They offered drinks, unlimited video games and great food, including a burger bar, nachos, wings and all the trimmings. My girlfriend even got to go, thanks Scott!

Recap of Events in Pro & Con Format:

The Pros:

• Great breakfast (coffee/donuts)
• Awesome Lunch (pizza)
• Great presentation
• Awesome content
• Began and Ended on time
• Little Self-promotion
• THE AFTERPARTY

The Cons:

• Too much review and beginner discussion
• A few technical difficulties

Overall, I had a really good time and learned a lot at the first ever SEOmoz Training Seminar. I would personally like to thank Rand (who for some reason thinks I look like a Chris), the Mozzers (especially Gillian and Scott) and everyone else who attended the event (Carlos, Nik, Ken, Eric and Jesse). I’ll be sure to fill out the survey and get it back to you with my feedback.

I want to thank Slingshot for visiting Washington and going to the seminar with me, I had fun man! Finally, I want to thank my girlfriend, Amber, for being so patient with me and understanding during the whole weekend and event.

P.S. If you guys ever track down my name tag, send it over will ya? I collect them from every event I go to, and would love to add one from yours.