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How Will The New Google Search Affect Your Search Experience?

in Blog, Paid Search, Search at 8:05 am 04/12/09

For those of you that still don’t know, Google is in the process of redesigning its home page, and is currently running beta testing for it.

if you want to see it for yourself, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you are signed out of your Google account

2. go to Google.com

3. Enter the following code into your brower’s URL window:

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:
U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-
53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

4. See the magic

OK. so now you should see a screen like this:

Google page1

So we’re all excited about the new look & feel of Google, and the new search experience, but the questions we’re asking are: How this is going to affect online consumers behavior? and How this will affect search engines optimization and paid search campaigns?

We  can summarize the changes in one word – refining. Google is sharpening the tool of refining, and will improve upon the search experience with several refine options.

The Main New Features and Their Impact

Refine by category on prominent position- this option is located on the top left side (eye catching position- as the eye scans from left to right). The categories are: News, Images, Video, Books, Maps, Shopping, Blogs and Forums.

Related results- the “see also” tab enables the user to find related content and similar results for his search term. With regard to eCommerce, it can be used as an effective cross selling feature for similar items (even by competitive brands/items!).

Refine by date- search results can now be refined by date, distinguished by the history of the content: recent results, past hour (breaking news), past day, past week, past year and custom range.
***
Smart search algorithm- The most interesting feature we’ve found is the search experience itself. When you enter a term to search, Google provides you results for every type of search, based upon what you’re looking for. For example, when entering “Wii games,” Google will present you with results in these categories: News, Blogs and Shopping. But, when entering a more specific term such as “buy Wii games,” the shopping category will be promoted, therefore making the search more relevant.

Shopping Related Search

Overall, when referring to shopping related searches, we notice 3 main category types: Brand search, Product search, Buy Product search.
***
Each category type refers to different search: first is the general brand search, second is specific product search (by the same brand), and third is the product search accompanied by the word “buy”.
***
The last search type (Buy Product) strongly implies that the searcher is actually a prospective consumer interested in buying this product, as opposed to just educating himself about the product. Google understands this, and thus presents the potential consumer with search results that are explicitly shopping oriented.
***
Let’s do a quick test. We will search for a product based upon the 3 categories types:
***
1. Nike (brand search)
2. Nike Shox (specific brand item)
3. Buy Nike Shox (buy specific item)
5. time refine-
6. “see also = cross selling ?”
buy wii games2. sopping on the left top side (eye chatcer possition).

***

Brand Search – “Nike”

When searching the term “Nike” – which is a generic search – we see that the first category in the refine search is News. Following that are Images, Video, Blog, Etc. It appears that without a specific search, the Google search categories will present the natural 7 structure. When you search “Nike,” you get more relevant news content than you do images.

brand only search

Brand Only search

- Product search – “Nike Shox”

When searching for “Nike Shox” – which is not a generic search – we see a change in the category order that Google presents us with: the first category in the refine search is Image. Right after that, we see Shopping, which jumped to the #2 position (In the natural 7 structure, it is in the #7 position). So, it appears that when searching for “nike shox,” there is more image related content than there is shopping related content.

spesific prodcut search

Specific Product search

Buy this product search – “Buy Nike Shox”

Searching for “buy nike shox”  clearly and directly defines the purpose of the search: shopping. Google’s search algorithm will adjust and reevaluate the search results for relevancy. In this search instance, the Shopping category will be presented as the first result.

buy spesific item search

Buy Specific Item search

Pretty cool stuff, right? How do you think the new Google homepage will affect eCommerce? I would love to hear your comments and thoughts.

Arie.

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