How Google's new Show Options feature will effect your SEO performance

Google launched a new ground breaking results feature yesterday at the second Searchology event, the first event being two years ago when they announced the launch on Universal Search.

The new feature expands on the original premise of Universal Search, blending results of different types including web pages, images, videos, books, by launching a new ‘show options’ link on the home page .

This enables searchers to easily categorise different types of content from Video, forums and results. Google has also added the nifty option of enabling users to view your results in new ways such as the wonder wheel on the bottom left navigation.

So how will this new feature boost SEO performance;

• Firstly it is increasingly important to tag and categorise all your on-page assets including news, Video, forums and images. By building this type of content you’ll be better able to harness potential new traffic 

• Make sure that your content is being updated so that the spiders can views and categorise these content elements.

• New content areas such as Video remain relatively uncompetitive so Show Options provides an excellent opportunity for content owners with Video Content to harness search.

• Correct tagging of images will also be critical as this feature enables users to tag different sizes and colours of images.

Overall I believe this is an excellent feature development. It will be interested to see how this will impact SEO referred traffic and user Search behaviour.