comScore’s findings are based on Google search queries observed through comScore qSearch (US?) during one week in January 2008.

Previous postings suggest that Comscore consider Universal search to be: news stories, maps, local information, images and video alongside the web search results you are used to seeing.

A later post is promised on type of Universal search, but we can speculate that News, Maps, images and Videos are most important.

During this period there were over 220 million Google searches containing a universal result, out of 1.2 billion searches overall:

1. 17% of the queries had a universal result
2. 16% of total Google clicks were sourced from a page where a universal result was present
3. 14% of paid clicks were sourced from result pages where a universal result was present.

In April 2008, Hitwise presented data showing the importance of Universal search within the UK (see figure). The upstream visits is most significant. This may under-represent the importance of Universal since searches within Google may shown Google.com/co.uk as the referrer.

Implications for search marketers

• Universal Search is valuable to web searchers / users and so important to SEO, so assess which digital assets you can include - best to breakdown by Local (maps - need to register), News (need to have a feed in Google News), Images (should happen automatically from site with correct markup labelling images) and Video (need to submit to YouTube or Google Video)
• Assess which keyphrases related to your brand are relevant for universal search queries, e.g. Search term + video or + tutorial
• Markup videos as recommended in our Best Practice Guide so they feature accordingly
• Look at viral marketing and syndication as ways of gaining more backlinks to your video results.

Since I posted this originally Andrew Girdwoood of bigmouthmedia has produced a useful checklist of issues to consider for Universal Search - check it out.

Implications for Google revenue

The data suggests that the introduction of universal search has been good for user experience, but may have negatively effected Google's revenues from PPC.

The difference between the percentage of queries with a universal result (17%) and paid clicks from SERPs with a universal click (14%) suggests the popularity of people clicking on universal results and that seachers are less likely to click on ads when pages contain a universal result (although I believe this may reflect less relevance for placing ads with the types of query e.g. "Star Wars" which result in a Universal search).

The ratio between the two is interesting since it suggests Google may have lost revenue through introducing universal search.

• View Comscore post on Universal search within Google results
• View previous post on types of Universal search