Google Universal Search

Last week, Google introduced a radical change to its search results with "Universal Search" which will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among its web page searches.

Many people don't realize that Google has multiple search engines - a separate search engine for web results, for images, for videos, for news, for blogs, for books, etc. These different search engines are available by clicking on the links about the Google search box.

Google has decided to break down the walls that separate their different search engines and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one set of search results.

Google will roll those changes out gradually and they are constantly tweaking to give the best user experience.

To follow some of the integration and tweaking, you can see a search for Footnote.com I performed last week. The arrow shows where a a link from the Google Video Search Engine has been added to the normal web page results.

Here is the very same search for Footnote.com I did today. The video link has been taken out of the normal web page results and instead a video link has been added to the top blue bar. (See arrow).

Of the two universal search results for Footnote.com, I prefer the second. It doesn't clutter webpage results with video clips, but does let me know that an important video is available.

Watch for constant changes as Google improves its new universal search.