Google Marries the Static and Live Web

If you haven't heard by now, Google launched a new way to present search results in a more integrated fashion. Instead of forcing you to go to separate search engines to dig the live web - e.g. blogs, news, videos, etc. - they now roll everything up in one set of results. They call it universal search.

What you might have missed, however, from the official word is this nugget. The giant web index that some 60% of online world uses to search is now assembled in real time. This means your search results could change frequently depending on the daily impact of live web content.

Google doesn't say it explicitly, but I suspect that their algorithm favors Wikipedia, news, blog video results now more than they did before. Lots of people won't even notice that Google made changes, but they're there.

The news today is significant. I've written here extensively about Wikipedia's growing impact on brand reputation. Now, with today's change, serious Wikipedia gaps or gaffes may show up more prominently in search results - and change more frequently.

Consider this salatious example that Danny Sullivan spotted in a search for George Washington. I had no idea one of our country's Founding Fathers had such views on a modern age issue like pre-marital sex. I am sure some kid writing a research paper had a good laugh at that one.

But it's no joke. It's in Google so it must be true.

(By the way, Google also has more up its sleeves when it comes to universal services - closer integration between Google Docs and its communications platform.)