Blended Search Results Here To Stay!
Repeated over and over at SMX is that Blended Results are the hot new trend (trend isn’t the right word, more like Tsunami) with serious staying power and looks like it will be changing, enhancing universal search dramatically (from vertical search to user intent results) for the better. Among some of the relationship ‘faucets’ that are going to personalize traditional search results, are must for IM’s to dial into advantage of Blended Results now are:
- Use of Video (images - with well thought out captions/keywords, news, blogging, etc.). At SMX, they shared these astounding statistics - “3 out of 5 in the U.S. consume online videos every month. Video category reaches monthly 111 million users generating 6 billion page views!”
- Notice this quote from the USAToday February 27, 2008, section 8B, on “Veoh” (www.veoh.com );
The average Internet browser today [in mid-2008] watches about 5 minutes of Internet video per day. That’s projected to jump to 45 minutes a day by 2011.
To be successful, these are recommendations to separate yourself from the casual YouTube video postings.
- Use high-resolution video. [remember: limit video to under 1 minute. If have more to say, create other video's. Also, add some custom Java applet button to the end your 1 minute video to "click for more information", as a suggestion]
- High quality audio or professional voice over. (if the customer can’t easily hear clearly, they won’t understand, and won’t be motivated to act)
- Add your URL or logo as a watermark for branding the media’s source
- Don’t conclude the presentation without a clear, motivating, call to action for the consumer. [This is critical for those of us that are doing a lot of Local Search services for clients, this will create tremendous viral marketing buzz as the clients are talking about how 'cool' their ads are and how they have helped increase their business.]
Blended results are obviously here to stay and we need to begin using these avenues to enrich the search results for our clients. Yahoo’s new OSP that Ty commented on being released this week publicly for the first time is evidence of that. Here is another image that will help explain that this search result is actually a “mini website” and obviously will get preferential attention:
More to come on this subject, for sure. SMX did make it crystal clear that this is just taking off (especially heavy use of video), and based on users sophistication will move forward as Blended Results really reorganize and truly revolutionize, SE page results.
To be helpful, check out some of these other video providers / portals:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
See the post “What Is The Golden Triangle? Blended Search?” for a new addendum on eye-tracking. Very interesting stuff that advertisers and marketers at SMX are already looking at with regards to Blended Search. This is the hot topic for the next year.