Yes! I blogged on thss a couple of weeks ago - http://www.weboptimist.com/is-universal-search-harder/2008/01/07/ .

We definitely need a way to turn Universal Search off. Sometimes, we just want web pages, not music, books and all the other stuff that gets thrown into the kitchen sink mix of results these days.

Nice, and I thought I subscribed to almost every SEO blog out there. :)

Funny I wrote about this in the fall issue of Search Marketing Standard. At SES Chicago, during the Orion panel about Universal Search, I asked the question if people would ever get fed up with it, and Jim from Google paused and said simply "no." Was funny then maybe but now it seems like maybe he ought to consider that question more carefully?

Universal Search really isn't the issue. It's the decline in relevant results and the reduced quality of their search results overall that are the problem.

If that's all due to Universal Search then Google does indeed need to "turn it off", but people should remember that Google 3.0 (Danny Sullivan called it 2.0 but the BigDaddy update was really Google 2.0) was touted as a complete rewrite of the system.

Google, bring back the most relevant results!

SEOs complain about it? HA! I'm sure they would, just more work on their end, but as a searcher, if they want my attention then it's good of them to take advantage of this opportunity, although I'm a bad target since I prefer doing most of my buying in downtown San Francisco since it's only a quick train ride anyway, with the exception of music (iTunes) and software (that I hunt down myself when I need to without the help of Google).

Actually I don't see what the problem is with Google Universal Search on the searchers end either, well not in the implementation anyway. The real problem is when images and videos just get thrown in, Google's algorithms cannot detect what's in the video itself or send us directly to the part they think is relevant. Google could do that with Youtube/Google Video results of course but they don't, but it doesn't matter if it's in a book, video, audio file, or web page as long as it's relevant.

I also don't care about the "Onebox" results, like with News and Images. If I want more news results, then the blue link in the recommended verticals bar (whatever that bar is just above the results) would offer a link to News results, but otherwise the News results (and Blog results) might as well just blend in as if they were "regular" or "organic" as you call them, results. Book results I feel should be marked as such and included directly in the search results, although as it is now it looks like they don't appear in the search results at all but only in the recommended verticals bar, and Finance is fine as long as it only (and consistently) appears under a company's corporate site with a plus box.

Sebastian

This is an issue that I have also been considering. Frequently there are searches where the video/picture aspect is entirely unwanted, and when considered from a usability perspective with the amount of attention it draws it only further slows down the task of searching for hard to find information.
i agree that there should be a choice to turn on certain aspects of the search such as the two mentioned above. similarly the use of xp over vista; its a choice many will make!

What about if they simply remember my last choice in their cookie? I don't like igoogle either, moreover it's a weighter page than the usual.

What about if they simply remember my last choice in their cookie? I don't like igoogle either, moreover it's a weighter page than the usual.

I don't like the new google and would like to return to google classic

don't like the new google and would like to return to google classic

There is a need for improvement in all areas of imformation media. I think that people have become suspicious of everything, an afraid of Private Information being used for tracking..Privace has become fear

I just want to go back to classic google now.

give us back the option for the old Google search!!!