Starting this week or next, Google will be adding blogs as new feature in its Universal Search results. What’s this mean? According to Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience, search queries on Google will now return links to blogs alongside the images, books, local maps, video, and news.
Google’s Universal Search initiative was kicked-off May 16 of this year, and the addition of blogs to the results marks the first new genre of results to be included since its launch. The Universal Search system is the result of an arduous five-year effort to completely re-vamp the company’s search algorithms, which blends results from their various content sources.
Blogs have been gaining significant momentum and notoriety over the past few years, and it is only fitting that they too be included amongst the Universal Search results. Other search engines have followed suite, with Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask all upgrading their algorithms and services this year to include more dynamic, relevant results.
The addition of blogs to Google’s Universal Search, however, isn’t the end of the company’s additions or tweaks to their search processes. Marissa Mayer recently disclosed to eWEEK that the current genres are only just the tip of the iceberg for Universal Search:
“We talked about it as a new playground for our engineers and it’s true. We’re actually developing a bunch of interesting experiments in terms of the interface and what could happen in terms of Universal Search.”
So be on the lookout over the course of the next week or so, and you’ll likely catch a glimpse of the new Universal Search results pages that will now include blog results. An official announcement from Google is undoubtedly forthcoming.
