With the launch of universal search, Google takes search engine technology to the next stage by blending search results across different content types (e.g. books, news, video or images) into one single search results page. The roll out follows an announcement made at the Searchology™ Press Conference, held by Google on Wednesday morning on the 16th of May 2007.
Presenting search results across multiple content types has been one of the biggest challenges within the search field. Google's new system now integrates results from its vertical search engines, including Google Images, Maps, Books, Video and News search, into the list of web results with which most users will already be familiar, thus creating one single universal search experience.
While Google has so far presented news, books, local and other search results separately at the top of the search engine results page, the new system now mixes these additional content types into one list of organic search results. This new approach which - according to Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google - provides "a more holistic answer" to search, not only makes it easier for users to find relevant information in one place, but also enables the search engine to sort its results across all the different content types according to their relevance.
In addition to the updated infrastructure and algorithms, Google has also launched a redesigned homepage, which now features a new navigation bar, including a dropdown menu at the top left side of the page offering quick access to Google's set of products. Previously these links used to be at the top of the Google search box.
This navigation bar will show Google's products in a different order, depending on the service used. Taking the results of different usability studies into account, this new 'contextual navigation bar' will list the 'closest neighbours' to the service in use, presenting easy access to other Google products that users will most likely find relevant. For example, while the search engine results page shows links to Google Images, Google Videos and Google News first, the navigation bar within Google's email service Gmail contains links to Google Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets and Photos, among others.
Among several innovations presented by Google at the Searchology Press Conference are a number of keyboard shortcuts, which will give users who aren't able to use a mouse better accessibility to search results, enabling the growing number of web users with disabilities to navigate through search results more quickly and easily.
Interestingly enough, it was Britney Spears who stood at the beginning of universal search. Back in 2001, Marissa Mayer presented a mockup sample search engine results page for Britney Spears that featured - in addition to web results - news, images and groups results for the pop singer on the same page. Britney was chosen as a typical example of a search term that would produce an overwhelming number of search results. Marissa Mayer's name is among several names listed on a patent application that Google published in 2005.
