Vertical Creep in Search Results :: Should Organic Optimizers be

Vertical Creep in Search Results :: Should Organic Optimizers be Concerned?

This year, like many people, I wasnt able to attend. However, I wanted to keep up with the news, so I found a great source of reports and updates. I will summarize the most important sessions to the best of my ability.

In my opinion, one of the most crucial topics is Vertical Creep.

Vertical creep is when non-organic and non-paid results start occupying top spots in search results. Verticals started showing up in search results back when Altavista was popular, and since then have grown into a much more sophisticated part of the overall search engine results page. Greg Jarboe was the first to speak of vertical creep and introduced everyone to verticals.

All the engines have verticals in some form or another nowadays. Google has its famous OneBox which is generally the place immediately below the top sponsored ads but immediately above the organic results. This is where you will find news, Froogle, and image results which may match a query.

For example, I wrote a few weeks ago about how, when you searched for Olympics on Google, you were presented with video...