Google has begun beta testing their accessible web search for the visually challenged. Accessible Search, available on Google’s experimental software site at http://labs.google.com/accessible, uses Google’s standard PageRank and goes an additional step by evaluating the usability of each Web page it displays.

What this means is that Google is showing they have the ability to incorporate web accessibility guidelines with their PageRank system, and come out with results that are useful to a wider audience.

I tried a few search terms through the engine, and here are some interesting results.

Search Term “Flowers”
Google’s #1 result is 1800flowers.com. But on Google Accessible Search, the number one site is tesco.com/flowers. This is a UK site that just happens to be very well coded. As a matter of fact, 1800flowers.com is not even on the first page of results. Interestingly enough, only 3 sites are on the first page, FTD, ProFlowers, and Dot Flowers. On a side note, USWeb has worked with 2 out of 3 of these companies on their search engine optimization.

Search Term “online marketing”
Google’s #1 result is usweb.com, and on Google Accessible Search, the number one remains usweb.com. The reason is simple, we created the USWeb site in Web Standards, and in compliance with Web Accessibility guidelines. As a matter of fact, when I search for another term “Internet marketing”, I see that strategy pay off even more with a #2 ranking on Google Accessible Search (I’m resisting the temptation to call it GAS), when we only rank #8 on Google.

On a side note, on each of these searches, I have noticed Wikipedia pop up very high on the fist page.

What does this mean? I’m implying that the results are are significantly better on Google Accessible Search. But don’t take my word for it, try it yourself. I think after you do some searching, you’ll agree that it would make a lot of sense for Google to just apply this to their current algorithm. Creating the barrier of clean code will weed out a lot of garbage. Keep in mind that blogs are often clean code because of the inherent for of design. So blogs will start to rank much higher. Also, .gov and .edu sites are usual by policy Web Accessible compliant. I firmly believe that Google Accessible Search could soon be a major addition to Google’s primary search engine. And the way to take advantage of that is to make your sites as accessible as possible.

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