Google Real Time Search

Google has announced several search enhancements in the past two weeks (including the extension of personalized search), but one of the most buzzed about items is the addition of real time search to its results pages.

Google has teamed up with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca to provide searchers with a “dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web”. Now, when you perform a Google search, you may see a scrolling box that features live tweets, blogs, news and other web content included in the top results. In short, Google sticks another "universal result" in the search results when they feel a real time result makes sense. This is the next step in Google’s efforts to provide its users with the “freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results” possible.

Here’s a screen capture which shows what the scrolling results look like:


Google offers the following video demonstration:



If you’d like to see real-time search in action, please check out:

• Search results for [Tiger Woods] – http://www.google.com/search?q=tiger%20woods&hl=en&gl=us&esrch=RTSearch&rtfu=1260284459&usg=b8a9
  

• Search results for [Copenhagen Summit] – http://www.google.com/search?q=copenhagen%20summit&hl=en&gl=us&esrch=RTSearch&rtfu=1260285144&usg=4dd7

Here is a round-up of the DBE team’s “real time” reactions to this new search enhancement:

• Deepa Maran, Group Manager, Technical Services: “SEO is not changed by this development. However, it is another reason for companies to develop their social media presence if they want to be involved in the real-time/breaking news stories in their arena.”


• Marc Engelsman, VP of Client Programs and Services: “The real time results in the Tiger Woods and Copenhagen Summit examples appear in different places. It also looks there are still 10 organic listings on these pages so I wonder if rankings will not be impacted technically as opposed to visually above/below the fold.”


• Ann Pyle, Group Manager, Client Services: “I was just looking at the real time results for Tiger Woods and saw some curse words and other inappropriate language from tweets – I wonder how Google will deal with that moving forward?”


• Pam Abbazia, Manager, SEO & Social Media Programs: “It seems like Google has a few bugs to work out in terms of the importance/relevancy/value of the tweets they show (perhaps this is where the new retweet button would play a role).”


• Rob Trautner, Manager, Paid Search Programs: “If Google is deciding based on some search frequency criteria to add this to the search results, it’s pretty responsive. The Curtis Granderson trade just happened, though the rumors have been circulating for a few hours.”