GOOGLE GETS REAL-TIME, FOR REAL THIS TIME
Google’s version of real-time search was unveiled today, where ‘live’ search results are displayed via AJAX on the search results page.
At first glance, it’s a pretty nice execution, blending real-time with relevance, rather than just real-time, which is the focus of all new social/real-time search engines.
It looks like the real-time results are surfaced when real-time is relevant to the query, much like YouTube, video and maps/local results are surfaced for specific queries.
According to the Google blog:
Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we’re announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.
From an advertiser’s point of view, this means that dove-tailing of search and social strategies is happening right now. For certain types of queries, paid search results may lose prominence in favour of the bright, shiny, and constantly updating live search. Advertisers targeting these types of queries will need to update the creative approach to appear as relevant as the live results, in order to gain any traction.
The new features are rolling out over the next few days. You can get an advance preview by clicking on a topic in Hot Trends, like Tiger Woods Update
And here’s another shortcut into real-time results: http://bit.ly/rtimesearch
What’s interesting is that you can consume much of what’s being said right now without having to click through to the actual search results, particularly in the case of Tweets.
Watch this space!
