SES Toronto: Universal and Blended Search
Moderator:
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Speakers:
Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image
Dustin Rideout, Account Director, Digital Strategist, Wunderman
Andy Renieris, Head of Search, Yahoo! Canada Search
Ostensibly, this session was part of the Advanced Track at SES Toronto, but it unfortunately focused primarily on what blended search is, and why you should be doing it. Given that blended search has been around for a year, and a major part of SEO for at least six months, I was hoping for a bit more in depth information. Still, there were occasional nuggets of interest.
Mitch Joel reports that during an event at the Googleplex, Google stated that 20% of all searches done every day are brand new to Google. That’s quite a bit higher than I thought it would be.
Andy Renieris announced the public release of Yahoo SearchMonkey. This is a development environment that allows a site to control the look of it’s listings in Yahoo’s natural search, blending in other media types. It does not impact a site’s placement within the rankings, just it’s look.
I wondered why there was a guy walking around the show in a monkey suit. Now I know.
In any case, users have to turn SearchMonkey on to see the results. Essentially, it is a widget. While this is not earth shattering at this time, if Yahoo integrates these changes more widely into the SERPs, it could have major impact in the future.
The final interesting comment came from Mike Grehan, who stated that blended search causes the “golden triangle” of eye tracking heat maps to go away. The eye is drawn all over the page to the new media types.
I would have hoped for more advanced information, but there were a few good pieces in this session.
