I was reading a new article on Pandia Search Engine News this morning that looks at ways to increase your site’s exposure in Google’s new universal search results pages. As they point out, it’s going to be more difficult for sites to rank on the first page of heavily “universal” search terms.

Where as the old style of Google SERP contained 10 “websites”, the new universal search might return 4 websites, 2 news stories, 2 videos, and a couple of other random vertical returns. So instead of competing for 10 top spots you’re not competing for 4.

Pandia has some good suggestions for improving your visibility in these new SERPs:

• Start a blog
• Get into Google News
• Publish videos to Google Video
• Opt-in to Enhanced Image Search
• Set up a local business listing

Of course, this is just a brief overview. Head over to Pandia to see more and get some specific details on the points I highlighted above.

Reading the post (and others like it) have got me thinking about typical search engine user behavior. In particular, I’m curious as to whether or not users are going to modify their searching habits in response to Google’s change.

We all know that the first page is the gold mine when it comes to search results. We also know that most people don’t go much further than 5 pages in - if even that far. As people have learned to use search engines more productively they’ve learned tricks and techniques for narrowing or expanding searches without having to flip through page after page of results.

This behavior has developed as a result of years of the same thing from the search engines: 10 “sites” per page. It’s what we expect. And humans are definitely creatures of habit. It took us a while to figure the whole search thing out. But things are changing… and while it may take a while… I anticipate a change in search behavior to coincide with the change in SERP presentation.

If, for example, you’re doing research you can’t very well cite a video… or an image. You might not even want to cite a news story. To find more of the information you’re looking for you may have to delve into page 2… or maybe 3… or more. At this point in the universal search transition I doubt there are many keywords overrun with extra, vertical content. But it’s certainly possible as this thing moves forward.

So will the common practice of sticking to the first page of the search results continue? I can think of a lot of instances were video, news, and local search results might be relevant. But I can think of a lot more where they won’t be. In theory Google will only return those vertical results when they’re relevant. But I suspect that will be more difficult than we think.

So while I agree that it will be more difficult to score a first page ranking, I also think that people’s search behaviors will change… in time. It’s not going to happen over night. But it will happen.

What do you think? Are you already changing the way you browse results? Do you think universal search is the answer to more relevant searches? Do you think people will adjust their browsing habits to match the changes in the results?