What Should I Know About Optimizing for Blended Search?

Original Post on Blended Search via SEO-Space: 

 2007 saw some interesting developments with the search engine results pages. Google in fact introduced their Universal Search incorporating things such as video, image results, book results, news results, blog results and the like. ASK had presented a more radical change with the launch of their 3-D interface. The ASK SERP contains three panes featuring search results, video, images, dictionary listings, related search options and more. In recent months, Yahoo and Live Search have also incorporated blended search into their results pages as well.

With more universal search results showing up in Google and the other engines, the importance of optimizing for universal search will be one of the main areas of focus for online marketers in 2008. Having said that, how can site owners and businesses optimize for blended search? Before answering that we need to list all of the potential blended search result options available.

Types of Blended Search Results

1. Image Results
2. Online Video
3. New Results
4. Blog Listings/Results
5. Book Listings
6. PDFs
7. Local / GEO Search Listings
8. Traditional Text Link Results aka Web Search
9. Product Search
10. Catalog Search
11. Movie Search
12. Music Search
13. Map Search
14. Health Search
15. Celebrity Search
16. Job Search
17. Recipe Search
18. Financial / Stock Search
19. People Search
20. Comparison Search

These are all examples of blended search results that I have personally come across in recent months. We can expect even more in the future. Consider blended search results consisting of social networking results that incorporate listings from MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Second Life, XING etc. What about audio clips such as podcasts, songs, radio and other audi0 clips? Look for blended search results to include items like this in the future.

So how do you optimize for blended search? We've previously discussed specific methods of optimizing for universal/blended search including tips on video optimization, but what else can one do to optimize for blended search?  Part two will examine some tips for optimizing for blended search.