Also, one of the video’s had 120,000 views, and therefore we assume that google decides to rank it highly because of the viewing figures. However, for most of our industries (building, baking, manufacturing etc) its really questionable as to whether its worth the effort to try to make something compelling that people will actually watch about what you do. I’m going to be tracking a number of examples of universal search results and trying to come to some conclusions about what people are doing / attempting to do in my new blog SEO For Biz (link above).

Lets get making videos

We completely agree with everything you wrote. In fact we have embraced this trend big time and developed a full marketing solution that we are currently deploying out with a select group of SMB clients where they can take all their media (videos, photos, audio), easily use that to market themselves with a compelling high-quality presentation online, optimize everything for all video search (and universal search engines), and have built-in direct response elements that tie search hits to lead generation. We believe the trends you have highlighted will be huge in the next few years and our solution is betting on exactly that as we believe that this space will see explosive growth just like Text SEO did a few years ago.

Excellent summary on Universal Search. I have to agree with Michael M. re: “A9 and Ask rolled out the first universal search interfaces this year. They may be smaller than Google in terms of market share but they deserve credit for making the step first.”

We’re a big fan of ASK 3-D at SEO-Space. In fact I’m a big fan of Universal Search period. Things like online video and image optimization are greatly important and will become even more so in the future.

Thanks for the great post Lee!

Great overview, as always.

We’ve been watching this carefully for the last 18 months. It was an obvious move for the search engines, but integration has been the big catch. From our perspective Ask.com clearly “does it better”. But today I just noticed Google added that secondary navigation below the logo, based on what media exists in the search results (for the number of results set in your Preferences. Try setting it from 10 or 20 to 100 results and see what happens).

We’ve recently launched a content optimization and distribution engine to help clients more effectively address Universal Search/3D Search.

The approach is called Content Harmony. It aligns all 4 primary content types (video, audio, images and text) and keywords them for optimum results. I’ll get you a free How-To guide soon, addressing the nuances we’ve discovered since my tenure at PRWeb.

You’re right: it IS tough work to align every media element and get it to perform. But the payoff is significant.

Stephen, glad to be a spark for some good experimentation.

Speaking to the choir Paul.

Thanks Justin and Jim. The cool thing is, after universal search there’s something else around the corner. The question is, what is it and how can we master it before the bloggers start blogging about it.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Universal search amplifies the need for small business to embrace conversational media as a marketing tool. An SEO-friendly website, a blog, video, and keyword-optimized press releases syndicated through the likes of PRWeb are all part of a marketing strategy that’s a must in today’s businesses climate.