• SEO Space, Friday, January 4, 2008 1:45 PM

Google rolled out Universal Search amidst much fanfare last year, but many industry insiders noted that with the exception of entertainment-related queries, most of the time users still got text-only results.

A debate over why the search giant was hesitant to show blended results (while upstart Ask continued to poke fun at Google's "bland" SERP in its TV ads) ensued. Part of the "blame" for the lack of multimedia content lies with publishers, as they've had to adjust to optimizing videos and images in addition to text. And the giant has always been a fan of testing, slowly making changes, retesting, and then changing again. But Jody Nimetz says that things will be different in 08.

Nimetz says that Google knows its SERP page is boring, and knows that Ask, Yahoo and MSN are all doing their best to gain market share by jazzing up their results. While the giant won't throw too many bells and whistles at searchers, expect more videos and images to show up as standard results.

And with Google's push toward search personalization, an increase in blended results for some users is inevitable. Nimetz says that a truly customized search experience will undoubtedly mean more images and book listings for "searcher A," and videos or plain text for "searcher B."

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