Google Universal search is a type of search that grants Google or rather tells google to show such results which are more appropriate on the SERP.
Be it images, local businesses, rich snippets, or any other searches on the SERP. On the strength of the functioning of its search engine, and in particular of its relevance algorithm, Google intends to offer increasingly relevant responses to queries typed by Internet users.
It is in this spirit that Google set up in 2007, “the Universal Search” or universal search.
For Google, this involves displaying in its results pages or SERP (Search Engine Result Page) links from the various indexes that it constitutes such as mages with Google images, videos with Youtube, news with Google News or Google News, and Google Maps.
What is the SERP, the Google Result Page with the Universal Search Made of?
In the case of universal search, Google’s results page will consist of several blocks. Each will highlight the resources (News, images, videos, maps) that are available to Google in its various indexes.
Thus, you will be able to find the Google News articles attached to your request on your left, the images from Google images on your right.
And below the Google News articles, you will find videos. And on your right, it will be the “ knowledge Graph”, it is a set of “encyclopedic” information which comes to provide details on your request like a biography for a personality.
Very often, you will find here the excerpt from the Wikipedia page. At the top of the SERP, you can also see products from Google Shopping.
What are the Consequences of a Universal Search for SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the set of techniques that improve the visibility of a website in the results pages of a search engine like Google.
Until the advent of Universal Search, the SERP came in the form of 10 blue links. Now with the universal search, the results page will include 8 links because the elements that will make up the universal search will indeed push the natural links further down the page.
The places to appear on the first page of Google are becoming rarer with universal search. SEOs will have to redouble their efforts to make their website appear on the first page.
And for those lucky enough to be #1 on Google’s first page on a query, it’s not their site that we see first with universal search anymore.
How to Properly Use a Universal Search?
A web SEO benchmarked your competitors at the time of their SEO audit, they are very familiar with their positioning, their advantages, and the forms of their content. He identified possible opportunities for your SEO strategy.
Universal search is a way for your website, your brand, your products to appear in different blocks in addition to the natural results. Your web referencer or SEO agency will have to make sure to offer content with which Internet users will want to interact.
While waiting to appear among the various blocks of Google’s universal search, your SEO consultant or your SEO agency will have to work the complete markup of the structured data on your site to create “rich snippets”.
This structured data is intended to provide additional information to search engines. Internet users will be able to learn more about your business directly in the SERP.
If the ranking of your site in the natural results of the search engine will not improve directly, choosing to work on your site with “rich snippets” allows better visibility of your website pages in the SERP.
You thus enrich the natural result, the link of your website with possibly visual elements or customer reviews.