Looking for new trends in search engine marketing? New developments in image search are improving the user experience using specialist browser plugins, while the major search engine results pages still look the same as ever.
This is not to say the results themselves aren’t changing, but the format of results and the way a user interacts with them seems to have gotten stuck. Remember the early Google results, a white page with blue links. And what is it now again?
Of course, that simplicity coupled with relevant results propelled them to the top. But will that approach really last forever? Admittedly, Universal search brings image, maps, shopping, video, photo results etc, but the experience is pretty disjointed.
Let’s say I want to research a Plasma TV to buy. A search on ‘plasma tv’ brings me retailer and manufacturer text listings, maps of installers near me, prices and spec in shopping, and some random user generated videos and photos of TV’s.
But what if I want to see the latest Plasma TV’s up close, spin it around, zoom in, look at the controls, all integrated with the price/spec/location of retailers etc. Off I go on a (potentially long) journey through the web until I find a site that can help.
Presenting more visual search results would seem an obvious way to step up the user experience in some cases. So perhaps the only thing that’s holding back Google, Yahoo!, MSN etc. is figuring out how to integrate those handy sponsored links that drive $500 share prices.
I wouldn’t doubt Google is looking at constantly improving results for users, but their commercial motive is ultimately to increase Adwords clicks rather than reduce them.
A couple of cool examples of image search results are below, from companies that don’t have Google Adwords revenue to protect.
Image search links:
http://cooliris.com/
http://beta.searchme.com/Initial.html
http://www.like.com/
Google image search update:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/04/google_refines.html
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3833337.ece
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