There's been a lot of talk lately about what the shift toward blended and universal search means for small business owners. On the one hand, those increased opportunities to snag listings allow one company to snag even more real estate on the first page. On the other hand, those increased opportunities to snag listings allow one company to snag even more real estate on the first page. It's all good if you're the company scoring more listings, it's not so good if your competitor does it and pushes you off the front page.

Patrick Schaber over at Lonely Marketer addresses this issue in a post explaining why Universal search is so important to small businesses.

The game has changed and by starting now with rich media content, small business marketers have the opportunity to grab some of that valuable real estate on page one of search results.

Patrick points to the search results for the phrase "Google Mobile" and notes that Google has included three links from their blog search engine at the bottom of the results page along with an insert of Google News listings in the middle of the page.

Those listings aren't showing up when I run a search today, but Patrick has screen shots of when he saw them. While these listings seem to come and go right now, chances are high they'll become a more regular feature. Obviously when it comes to things like blog listings, you'd be looking at a fairly limited run in the rankings. Google's obviously going to look to pull recent, relevant posts. Nonetheless, it's a good example of how creating topical, keyword rich content can help you score some front page listings in the new environment of search.