Google Experiement with Right Hand Column Results and Universal Search

Today on Google Blogoscoped, Philipp Lenssen illustrates a new Google experiment in which Google takes some of the universal search results that would normally be displayed in the main serps column and instead displays them on the right where you might normally see PPC ads. He makes a couple of interesting observations concerning the reasons that Google might have for doing this, most of which would economically benefit Google including increased interaction in the right column where PPC ads are typically shown and increasing Google's opportunity to hand pick results based on economic considerations. I believe he refers to it as "allowing Google to try get away with more aggressive product pimping". For what's it worth, I don't think that either of these is really a motivation for Google as much as improving their user interface is the goal.

Google isn't stupid and if they see someone else doing something that gives them an idea on how to improve their product, they are going to capitalize. Now I think there is a happy coincidence for them in terms of retraining users to pay more attention to the right column if they stick universal search items there. But I don't believe that's as big a motivation as some people might think. I don't think it really has much of an effect on SEO process as much as it, once again, underscores that Universal search can be optimized for in terms of videos and images.

I think it will be interesting to see if this experiment becomes a standard part of the Google user interface. In the meantime, I gotta get back to optimizing some Meta tags. Have a great day.