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Google Universal Search

Google Embed Playable Video within Universal Search Results

Sat May 19 01:29:37 2007

With the roll out of the new Universal Search results, Google have taken away a major source of traffic and potential income for many publishers.

If you have a site ranking in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for a keyword or phrase that also has a competitor with a video, I would suggest that the competitor will get the traffic (or at least the initial video view), even if they are lower in the results than you. The video will have a thumbnail and is often embedded and playable within the search results themselves. It's too compelling to watch the video for most users.

In the following video I show a couple of searches and a couple of the ways in which Google are integrating their other search products, video, music, blog into the main results in a variety of methods, either directly in the SERPs with the OneBox or by more direction promotion of Google's other specialised search features.

I think that the embedded video will make the greatest difference to most users, and publishers. If you publish video you may get more "eyeballs", but many will be on Google itself and therefore you will lose any opportunity to convert with advertising, though you will gain through exposure to your brand.

Finding new ways to exploit the video embedding will be a huge source of traffic (and income). For the moment though, it could herald a drop in traffic as Google's own promotion of thier results take over the SERPs (which are no longer a competitive top ten) and the video results being more popular than text.

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