It appears that Google is testing the concept of adding a Google Base search box in their serps. Below is a screen capture of what Google is showing for the keyword “homes for sale”. Since they are already showing three paid listings on top of the organic search results it is interesting they would take away even more page real estate to add a search box for real estate listings in Google Base. If they keep this up it will not matter if you rank #1 since no organic search results will be above the fold. Google Base is still free so it wouldn’t be adding revenue. The tests I did returned pages that are already in their standard search index. I don’t really see a good reason for this, unless Google is laying down the groundwork for more specialized searching (after all you can only expect so much relevance when you have a single user input box) Good luck Google with your beta test. Questions, comments? Speak up.
[tags]google base, google beta, google serps[/tags]