Google Universal Search Arrives

Google.com is now sporting a crisp new look following the launch of its Universal Search system, also dubbed ‘Google 2.0’.

Now when you receive search results rather than the traditional long list of other Google services that ‘may’ be relevant to your search, results from these other verticals are blended straight into the web results, for example searching on ‘ronaldinho goals’ returns mostly Youtube, Metacafe and Google Video results and you can even view them from the search results page! This blending has been happening for some time with local searches and improvement to the interface also means you are shown additional Google vertical links that are relevant to your search.

For example my search on ‘president bush’ now returns web, news, image & video vertical links:

In comparison to a search for ‘sopranos’ will return web, news, blogs & groups:

Universal Search is only available on the US version right now but expect it to be coming to your local Google search very soon. Results can be blended in from web, news, video, images, local, blog, groups and book search results. The interface is the result of Google’s challenge to return all useful content types for any specific query and represents several attempts at doing so!