Syndicate Search Is Coming?

Google registered thirty variations of a "syndicated search" domain on the September 15th that hint at an upcoming "syndicated search" feature. When I think syndication, I automatically envision blogs but Google already has Google Blog Search. There are a few possibilities for the meaning of these domains. Google Blog Search could be the recipient of a new name (something similar to Google Syndicated Search), or they are working on a separate service to aggregate all RSS/Atom feeds it can find not necessarily just blogs.

Another possibility (and the one I think is more likely) is support for the OpenSearch format created by A9. The official site for OpenSearch describes it as the following:

OpenSearch is a set of simple formats for the sharing of search results. Any website that has a search feature can make their results available in OpenSearch™ format. Other tools can then read those search results.

OpenSearch basically allows developers to syndicate search results to be consumed by aggregators (like A9 Search or Google if I'm right). Currently, there are over 400 search providers that publish their results using this format they include sites like flickr, New York Times, Wikipedia, imdb and more. If this is what is happening, it would be interesting to see if the feeds integrate with organic search results or if they would be a part of Google Co-op.

Yes, this is all speculation, but when Google registers domains, they are usually getting pretty close to announcing something. If the recent past has any weight, we will be seeing what these domains mean very soon.