The 5HITS

Blended search or as Google calls it Universal search was released with much fanfare in May 2007 and going to change the face of search results forever. Hearing Google Australia representatives talk about it and answer questions at events on it was a case of “its coming, and will be driven by users”.

Well where has it gone? Its July 2008 and Google.com.au (Search Australia) is a Universal Search desert. Google.com.au (Search the web) has some blended results but mainly news. Universal search appears not to be that Universal, in fact its battling to straddle the planet.

The stats:

Looking at around 700 searches on product related searches from category through to a product specific terms, we established the following:

• Google.com.au – Australia only has less than 1% of its results including a blended result
• Google.com.au – Search the web had around 9% of its results include a blended result however 90% of those were News results
• Google.com – Around 18% of the results included blended results and these were far more venly spread, including books, scholar and blogs, none of which showed up locally. Read more…