Bill Tancer of Hitwise released new data comparing Google’s web properties before and after the release of Google Universal Search. As we know, Google Universal Search changed how Google’s vertical search results appeared in the main Google web search results.
Overall, Google Maps and YouTube saw the biggest increase, while book search and image search took the biggest dive in traffic.
Google Maps saw a 20% increase in traffic because prior to Universal search, Google only displayed map results for a very limited set of queries. Now, Google Maps results are far more common and take up to three of the seven web search results.
YouTube realized an 8.26% increase in traffic since the launch of Universal search. Prior, YouTube videos were not shown in Google’s web search results.
Image search took a 7.22% dive, most likely because the image one box results were no longer guaranteed to be displayed at the top. Image search results now can be found at the bottom, middle or top of the results.
More statistics on Google’s web properties before and after the Universal launch can be found at Hitwise.
Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Google: Universal Search | Google: YouTube & Video | Stats: Hitwise
Wasn’t the whole point behind the Universal search implementation about driving traffic to some of the lesser used Google products? Not that YouTube.com needed the traffic but by placing even more emphasis on this Google product, I would imagine that the YouTube competitors might be receiving even less traffic now. Good work Google, making it about your product(s) and NOT the websites you originally set out to serve.
Oddly enough whenever I think about Universal Search these days I can’t help but hum the Police hit “Wrapped around your finger” and more specifically the line… “When you will find your servant is your master”