10
Dec
2009
Real time search live on Google
Real time search is here. Today Google announced search results you can now see in real time…
What does ‘real time’ mean?
As the world is tweeting, updating a Facebook status, submitting a wiki, news article, blogging etc on the web, you can have it right there and relevant to your search as it happens. This is hugely significant for the way users use Google and how the marketeers will sell on it…
What does this mean for search engine marketing?
Up to now it’s been difficult for online marketeers to justify spending too much time on social media to promote a business. Facebook and Twitter have found it hard to monitise their sites as users really aren’t looking to make a purchase. They’re socialising.
Now real time search is fully integrated into the main Google search engine results pages (SERPs), people searching for products will get real time social network search results well as the business listings, adwords ads and organic results.
Any links you include in your Twitter updates for example, are fully click-able in the SERPs which is great for anyone with something to say (or sell).
As it stands most of the updates you get are Twitter based (and blog and news articles) but Facebook and Myspace are on board and will be live soon.
What does this mean for search engine optimisation?
What I think this means for SEO is that all our hard efforts to make web pages relevant and SEO friendly have taken another blow as they could in all possibility be below the fold even if it ranks well.
I did a search for ‘climate change’ and the first organic and non timely or social networked result is the BBC, way down the page after three adwords ads, the latest news results and the real time search results. Obviously it depends on what your search is but it’s worth thinking about how this evolution in search affects the industry nonetheless…
This is an interesting move – obviously Google have been worried for a while about the way Twitter has this niche in real time search. As to how this works though in the long term I think its all about relevance. Your ‘climate change’ example is a good one – the updates are relevant because its a current trending topic. However, you don’t get the same real time results if you search ‘web design’ – nor should you.
At the end of the day, Google obviously want to direct people to what’s on the internet, whatever it is. If they can work out a way that a search on certain topics can be delivered more relevantly with real time results this is a great thing. Social use of the internet drives relevance. In the old days, the main way of establishing this was via links – which has been abused to the point of being meaningless. If this all means we have to be cleverer about how we use the web socially and we keep web content relevant then this is a good thing.
Finally, the fact that Google have done this shows they recognise that access to the web is no longer exclusively through the front door of Google. Google may not have any real competitors at the moment in web search – but Facebook and Twitter have shown there are other routes in. This is a fantastic thing for the web and for users. Maybe .tel will be the next one!
Alick Mighall – Managing Director, Miggle Ltd
miggle.co.uk – Consultancy, Planning, Design, Development, Content and Media
Premier House, Brighton & Hove, BN1 1UB
T: 0845 094 8443 T: +44 (0) 1273 311443 M: +44 (0) 7748 188012
@alickmighall Full details on alick.tel