Overview of Universal Search

Univeral Search has changed the search engine landscape (err, read; Google) a lot. We see these results everyday on the internet while using search engines. My goal with this overview is to provide you with examples of universal search, and also other curiosities seen in the Google Search engine. I was inspired by a previous post on search engine land by Danny Sullivan, but by date of today, that post is almost one and a half year old and the landscape might have changed a bit. In 2008 another post was launched showing some of the universal blended results here.

what is universal search?

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Examples of universal search items

Image

Video

Maps

Books (replaced by Google Base?)

News

Stocks

Blogs

Products (Google Base)

Code snippets

A Full Blend of items

Other curiosities
Google provides more results in the Google results. They hope these special features improve our search experience.

Weather

Time (in location)

Calculator

Unit Conversion

Dictionary Definitions

Spell Checker (does this automatically, ‘Did you mean? ‘ )

Local Search

Movie Showtimes

Music Results

Airline Travel Info & Flight Tracking
Currency Info & Converter

Package Tracking

Patent Search

Area Code (Shows a map )

Related Searches

Translated Searches

Country / Calling codes

Travel information

Football (soccer) information

Google is experimenting with universal search all the time, so it could be that you detect new, yet unpublished, features of the Google search engine. I’ll try and keep this list updated.

The full disclosed list is published on the Google website itself. , you will be able to find here. Note: I find some of the examples not working anymore so these may have been replaced over time.