Image via WikipediaIn May of 2008 Google launched Universal Search that included images, video’s news, books, maps and local locations on the Google SERP. Still these pages are linear the results display as a list. It’s a manifestation of the Quest for “Relevancy” and User Intent which we discussed previously in this blog. Nothing new in and of itself because in truth Google Search has been multifaceted for many years.

This changed only how this information was accessed and displayed. Information available from Google Search on Blogs, News, Video, Images, Maps (Google Earth) has been with us for awhile now because Google Search is in truth many search engines combined.
In November 2008 Google launched  “Custom Search” a potential game changers for the Internet Marketing Community. In essence they passed the power to the “People and Prospects” the ability to influence directly search results. They can reorder the list, delete and remove websites from the results and leave comments (Think Reviews) on specific links. That is an incredible increase in power for this Actor as they can just take your website right off the SERP or leave a damaging comment of what they found following the link to your site!

These abilities are only made available when you’re logged into your Google account (for now) and it hasn’t reach a ctrical mass of users willing to spend the time to customize their setting in Google to really take advantage of fine tuning a search result page. It’s now an imperative that your website presents itself in a compelling way and your content is a natural drawing card full of information pertaining to the keywords you optomized. In the very near future a visitor may just zap your site right off their SERP!

Tags: custom search, Google, Google Search, Internet marketing, Search engine optimization, Search engine results page, Searching, SEO, Universal search, Web search engine, Website