evilgreenmonkey

It’s this year’s buzzword and the topic that every search conference goer is talking about, although most people are still unsure about what Universal Search is and how it affects them. The term is used by Google to describe their rollout of a new search result format, combining maps, images, video, news, products and blogs into the main search listings.

Although Google has been offering this data via its “OneBox” for a number of years now, the new format will actually integrate the new data sources into the web search listings. It effectively means that a website ranking 9th or 10th in the web results for a term, could get pushed onto the second page by a video clip or news article outranking them in the new result set.

Google thinks that this new style of results will be more helpful for the searcher and will show them information that they may not have thought to look for otherwise. It’s not surprising that the overall take up of Blog Search and News Search has been slow since launch, with the average Google user only knowing how to use the main search box and rarely venturing onto the other search tabs. The new result set will neglect the need to actively seek out these features, helping a user to find what they want first time. It’s important that the roll-out is carried out correctly however, which is why the process has been a gradual one. Someone searching for car prices doesn’t want to see an image of the vehicle and you don’t expect to see a blog result when seeking professional medical advice. The algorithm needs to determine which data sources are most appropriate for each topic, which is where search and click data will most likely play an important role.

How does this affect your company? Firstly you may find that you web page rankings drop as a result of other content sources outranking them. Listings for images, news and video, also take up more screen space than a normal web listing, so your 5th position ranking may now require the user to scroll down in order to see it.

Other than trying to increase your rankings for key terms, your best defence is to try and get your content included in the various new search types. If your company builds or manufactures a product, remember to use the product make and model as the file name on images and to use “alt” attributes in your <img> tag to describe the product. Keep your company blog up to date and remember to add Google to your list of search providers to ping. Keep an archive of your press releases and publish industry news in order to get into Google News. Demonstrate and promote your products using vodcasts (video podcasts) and upload them to YouTube. As with web pages, it’s important to build links to your content, images and video in order to increase its perceived popularity. This is often a much easier task than with web pages, as the medium has only recently started to be promoted in this fashion. Just because your web ranking may drop, doesn’t mean that your other content can’t be number one. Universal Search is here to stay and will be the default search result format for all Google users. It is important to embrace the issues and opportunities now in order to stay in front of your competitors.

I’m happy to announce 2 new ventures that I’m very excited about.

Firstly, after leaving my in-house role at PartyGaming, I have now partnered up with some brilliant SEOs, to form a new consultancy. The company is called Ayima Search Marketing, please don’t ask me what “Ayima” means though . I work alongside Mike Nott, who is a fantastic SEO, but likes to keep a low profile. We’ve also just hired a very talented young SEO, who most Black Hats will know from his plethora of free SEO scripts which many have used or adapted at some point. Ayima specialises in offering a level of SEO that is not currently found in the UK, as well as providing on-site support (it’s like having your own in-house team). Although our team has a strong background in Black Hat SEO, we provide best-practice services to clients and use our darker knowledge to understand on-site and competitor issues to a degree unlike any other.

The second piece of news is my new role as Editor of Sphinn, a forum and community site launched by Danny Sullivan and the crew at Third Door Media. In order to dedicate enough time to my new position, I have decided to step down as Forums Editor at Search Engine Watch. Danny started SEW back in 1997, which he later sold to JupiterMedia (now Incisive Media) and left in 2006. After he departed from SEW, Search Engine Land was born along with SMX conferences and now Sphinn. It’s sad that I’m leaving SEW after my brief spell as an Editor, although I really look forward to playing a key role in building and developing Sphinn.

Lastly, if you’ve tried to email me recently without reply, please try again. I’ve changed email addresses (although the old one should now forward on), as well as buying my first home which proved very time consuming.

I was recently asked by Incisive to start writing a column for In-House SEM in the SearchEngineWatch Experts section. My first article looking at brand protection went live a few days ago, and I should be writing a new article at least once a fortnight. You can find a list of articles that I write from my Bio page, although I highly recommend subscribing to the SEW Experts RSS Feed. And before you mention it; yes I do look stupid in that photo, no I’m not smiling and yes I did take the picture using my Mac webcam rather then getting a professional to do it.

Places you’ll find me:
SearchEngineWatch Experts – As above.
SearchEngineWatch Forums – Spending a lot of time here due to my new responsibilities as the Admin.
Search Engine Roundtable – I feel guilty for not putting more of an effort in for Barry on his site, although most of my forum time is spent looking after SEW. I’ll try to get posting here again soon.
SEO Blokes – I need to post here more often, I think we all do really.
evilgreenmonkey – Sorry I haven’t written much SEO stuff, you’ll find some good content on my SEW Experts column though and I should have some more white/grey/dark-grey hat posts coming here soon.
LondonSEO.org – I only post event news on this site, although any UK SEO/PPC/Affiliate guru should get their arses along to these events. They’re free and you meet loads of cool people (don’t worry, I don’t include myself as “cool people”).

When I’m not working 14 hours a day, I use Lee Odden’s marvellous blog list in Google Reader (it helps my karma) to keep up on the industry news. I’m also impressed with the kingdom that my mate Rand is building for himself over at SEOmoz. Rand has a bit of the Charlies Angels thing going on over there, I’m sure he only hires pretty people. The mozzers always had a big following, although I’m starting to find people who only ever read stuff posted by moz HQ. I think that Scott will be the first mozzer to use his power for evil, tempting readers into a spiral of eBooks, self-help courses and getting links to his network of MFA sites.

Right, I’m off to look for an office, an apartment and a hangover cure that works.