The last week has seen major changes to the way that Yahoo! presents its search results. In many ways these changes are a response to Google’s move to, what it calls, Universal Search. Essentially this means that where there is a wide variety of content types that match a user’s search, they are all displayed in the same place; this is a move on to the traditional format of just showing text results in the main listings, and having video, images and other content types in separate areas.

Whilst at first glance it appears obvious why Yahoo! would follow Google’s lead (companies as successful as Google tend to inspire imitators) on another level it’s a risky move. A recent study by Compete found that Yahoo! is actually the most successful search engine in terms of the number of times searches on it result in clicks; in other words, this suggests that Yahoo! actually does a better job than Google at returning results that people want. However as Rand points out at SEOmoz:

just because a product is better at satisfying the customer doesn’t mean the customer feels more satisfied with that brand.

John Batelle, author of the excellent book The Search, also makes a valid point which could explain these results which will, to many, be unexpected:

I wonder if folks who do tons and tons of searches each day - the most high volume, hard core users of search - might be Google users, and also might use Google the way I do - very iteratively, in other words, I try a lot of query strings till I get the one I want, then I drill down.

Whatever the reason though, Yahoo’s move to search results that include videos, images & suggestions of related content, shows that it feels the best way to increase its share is to follow Google down the Universal Search road. And with that in mind, what should companies wishing to benefit from search traffic be doing about it?

Essentially they should be doing what they should always have been doing: creating great content, and optimising it so that it can be found by relevant users. In terms of what this actually means in terms of Universal Search it could include any number of things.

• Create interesting photos on Flickr & other photo sharing sites, and optimise the titles, tags & adjoining copy of these with the terms you wish to target (you should also link to your primary site from the photo description).
• Create videos (interesting ones preferably) and include them on sites such as YouTube, Yahoo! Video, etc.. Again, think about the copy that you use to describe the videos
• If you’re promoting a business with an actual location, make sure that it is submitted to sites such as Google Maps
• Got a blog? Make sure that you’re creating interesting & relevant posts & submit your blog to Google News; you can also use the blog to link all the aspects of your campaign together - pointing to images, videos, etc..

I could go on & on but one thing I would add is that when considering sites such as Flickr & Yahoo!, make sure that you don’t limit yourself to properties belonging to just one of the engines. Unsurprisingly, videos from YouTube (owned by Google) tend to do very well in Google’s Universal Search, whilst Yahoo! appears to favour its own properties. Whilst Google may have the lion’s share of the search market, it would be foolish to ignore Yahoo! (and the other engines) entirely.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that these new types of results pages are actually changing the way that people interpret the results; a recent eye tracking study by Gord Hotchkiss of how people react to universal search results (or blended results as he calls them) showed that the idea of the golden triangle may have had its day. Google; changing the way that we interact with results, and the way that its competitors run their businesses. Not bad for a 9 year old.

Of course, if you’d like any advice on this or any other aspect of search engine optimisation, then why not give us a call?

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