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The future of search is unclear – what is clear is that change is
rapidly happening for all of the top Internet search engines. Google as
always is the frontrunner for many of these search trends, but even
little guys like Ask.com are making waves. In this article, I will
attempt to cover some of the more interesting search trends that are
occurring today with the top Internet search engines – but I am by no
means being comprehensive about the subject. Things are changing on a
weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis, and future articles will cover
additional developments in depth.

Universal Search

In May 2007, Google – the leader among top Internet search engines –
got people talking (again) when it rolled out its latest search
concept, Universal Search. Universal Search was Google’s attempt to
create a single page of search results, rather than separate pages for
types of results, such as videos, images, maps, and websites. When it
was first introduced, many search engine optimization firms raced
around exclaiming that this was one of those search trends that would
change everything and that new optimization rules should be created and
followed immediately.

I published an article in early 2007 in which I noted, “The problem
with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also
introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use.”¹
I also wrote, “Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO
campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if – users’ search
habits are hard to change overnight, even if you are Google and you
essentially define what searching is and how it works.”²

And in fact, Universal Search didn’t quite take off the way Google had
hoped. A post on MediaPost’s Search Insider by Mark Simon boldly
states, “Universal Search will probably not be viewed as the greatest
Google fiasco since Google Video, but it’s clear that it’s failed to
deliver on the vaunted promises made by Marissa Mayer back in May.”³
So will we see more of Universal Search, or will it be quietly put to
the side? Will other top Internet search engines want to use it for
themselves? Only time will tell, but it seems like Google needs to do a
lot more work before users really warm up to it.

Personalization and Personalized Search

Personalization on the other hand seems to be one of the search trends
working very well for Google and many of the other top Internet search
engines. In an article I wrote a few months ago, I said “The basic
principle behind personalized search is simple. When you go to Google
and type in a search query, Google stores the data. As you return to
the engine, a profile of your search habits is built up over time. With
this information, Google can understand more about your interests and
serve up more relevant search results.”⁴

As it works right now, if you use a Google product (Gmail, Google
toolbar, AdWords, etc.), Google is keeping track of what you search for
and what websites you visit, and it’s then tailoring your results
appropriately. Search for “bass,” and Google will know whether you mean
the fish or the instrument. As I pointed out, though, there are major
issues with search trends like personalization:

Privacy issues that arise from personalized search are also a big
question. The EU recently announced that it is probing into how long
Google stores user information (this probe was subsequently extended to
include all search engines). AOL recently committed a serious blunder
when it released search data from 500,000 of its users, and it was
discovered that it was fairly easy to identify many people by the
search terms that they use…⁵

Yet if nobody makes a fuss about this, then it’s very likely Google -
and the other top Internet search engines – will start tracking
everyone behind the scenes, whether they use a Google product or not.

It’s actually already starting – right now, the cookie Google places on
your machine (did you even know they did that?) will expire in two
years – but they won’t really expire at all. According to the official Google blog:

In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that
will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the
cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users
who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2
years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that
their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be
able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.⁶

Seems it won’t be long before Google knows what you’re searching for before you do.

Expanding “Sneak Peeks”

Ask, one of the smaller of the top Internet search engines, has been
using sneak peeks to entice searchers for a while now. Searchers who
use Ask.com can mouse over an icon next to many results and see a
screen shot of the website. No clicking needed. Google, always watching
for search trends, seems to have noticed, because they’ve filed a
patent for expanding their own snippets.⁷
Soon searchers on Google may be able to read expanded summaries of
pages, or longer clips of page text. This tactic appeals to searchers
who are now demanding more and more information faster and faster from
the top Internet search engines, and who don’t want to waste precious
seconds clicking on a link and then on the back button to find just the
right site for their needs.

Syntax Queries

When Ask was Ask Jeeves, the butler was supposed
to listen to your search queries in the form of questions and then get
answers for you. The problem was, this never worked exactly the way it
was supposed to. Instead of answering the question based on syntax, the
engine still responded to searches in the same way others did, by
analyzing the words and returning a list. Jeeves was retired with a bit
of fanfare, and the engine handles queries in the more traditional
manner for now. But all of the top Internet search engines have
continued to work on this concept, with Google again leading the way
since it has the manpower and brainpower to do so. I expect that within
the next year, this will be one of the search trends that the engines
will want to focus on with a greater push toward answering questions
rather than just returning related results.

Speech Recognition and the Mobile Market

Speech recognition is really going to be one of the huge search trends
in the coming months and years for the top Internet search engines. In
an interview from this past summer, Peter Norvig, director of Google
Research, noted, “[Google] wanted speech technology that could serve as
an interface for phones and also index audio text. After looking at the
existing technology, we decided to build our own. We thought that,
having the data and computational resources that we do, we could help
advance the field.”⁸
With speech recognition in place, one could go to Google (or another of
the top Internet search engines) and use a microphone to ask a question
aloud, or just say some keyphrases, and get a list back immediately.

And speech recognition has the biggest benefit for top Internet search
engines when it comes to users of mobile devices. Let’s face it, as
advanced as those keyboards may have gotten, they’re still a pain to
use and it’s time-consuming to type in more than a few sentences.
(That’s y txt msgs r lk ths, u c?). Norvig is on top of that too,
noting, “In general, it looks like things are moving more toward the
mobile market, and we thought it was important to deal with the market
where you might not have access to a keyboard or might not want to type
in search queries.”⁹

More to Come

As I noted in the beginning, this is just a small sampling of the
search trends for the top Internet search engines today. Google, Yahoo,
and even Ask are all working tirelessly to get your business and to
make search easier, faster, and more accurate. Keep checking back for
future articles covering some of the other trends and following up on
the ones I’ve already discussed.