In this tremendous article by Danny Sullivan over on Search Engine Land he discusses the details of what he refers to as “blended search”, which is a term he uses to describe the new wave of changes to the search results stemming from the inclusion of entries from other mediums such as maps, pictures, videos, blogs, news and so on. Google are the most well known for this with their “Universal Search” of which in Australia the most noticeable result is the Google Maps results that now often occupy the first 3 positions for searches involving a specific location, but the other engines have now started doing the same – or claiming too anyway.
The article talks about how the real term to use to describe this is “Search 3.0″ seeing that “Search 1.0″ would have been based on location, frequency, & on-the-page ranking criteria, and “Search 2.0″ began looking at links & other off-the-page criteria. He then goes on to discuss the imminent “Search 4.0″ that takes into consideration social aspects and personalisation.
A great diagrammatic representation of Universal Search is also given;
I’ve only skimmed over the outline here so I highly recommend checking out Search 3.0: The Blended & Vertical Search Revolution.
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