Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

Recently Google launched a new “options” feature  on their search results page.  After clicking the “Show Options” link a new left navigation opens that allows  the searcher to “slice and dice”  search results into more relevant chunks. Searchers can now focus their results by videos, forums, reviews, time or even a more visual representation.

So what does this mean for search behavior? Not much. How many general web searchers do you think will actually take the time or care to refine their search results? I would guess a tiny fraction of the millions of people who come to Google.com to do a search. Google’s success is based on its simplicity - other search engines have been giving visitors options for years and none of them caught on. People want instant gratification and are used to trusting the results Google puts forth. Why do you think the vast majority of people barely scroll below the fold or click to another search page? Hint: it isn’t because they found the most relevant search result.

From an SEO perspective this doesn’t change anything either. A good SEO strategy should already include Videos, Forums and Product Reviews, so if anything this just reinforces the importance of how SEO goes beyond just on-page optimization and linking.