Real-Time Search

Posted at December 10, 2009

We knew it was coming and now it’s here!

A few days ago Google launched real-time search.

Real-time search is the catch phrase used to describe indexing what’s happening on the web, in real time. They will pull in Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, Blog posts, Google News Feeds, Yahoo! Answers and even MySpace feeds.

Back in October Google announced a partnership with Twitter and Bing announced a partnership with Twitter and Facebook. Now Google has Facebook and MySpace as well.

Note that real-time search works on Android and iPhone as well.

Although it will take a few days to roll out this feature for everyone, you can see it now in a “Hot Topics” feature that’s been added to Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends). Click on any trend, then click a “Hot Topic,” and you’ll see the new “Latest Results” area of Google search results.

Social media is a rich source of information, with opinions, insights, and even breaking news and the engines want to tap into this current information and deliver it to searchers.

What’s Does It Look Like?

Bing has had a section for tweets in the search engine results pages (SERPs) since late October. Yahoo began relying on tweets to point out hot news stories in its results last month.

In Google’s version of real-time search, there will be a section of its main results page that will include scrolls relevant information within a few seconds after it pops up in the web index.

Previously a new search query was the only way to see the blog posts, status updates and other information that Google had collected since the previous query. Now the stream of tweets, Blog posts, videos, photos etc will stream through the results page.

Google’s real-time information will eventually include streams from Facebook and MySpace, but not until early next year, said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search products and user experience.

Microsoft and Yahoo already have access to some Facebook updates.

“People expect search engines to make all kinds of information available to them,” said Amit Singhal, a Google engineer who oversaw the development of the real-time tool.

Other Google Updates: They provided a preview of a test product, called “Google Goggles,” that will enable people to send a photograph of an object and get search results about it.

What Does This Mean To You?

Social Media (Twitter and Facebook and I guess MySpace) are more important than ever and if you aren’t Blogging yet – you also need to be doing that. Keeping up with the trends is the best way to keep your site competitive and coming up on top.