Infinite Path

Google’s long-held plans to roll out real-time search as part of their main search results have finally come to fruition. The search engine giant has been intending for a significant amount of time now to bring its users up-to-date information, that continues to update after the search results have appeared for a certain term.

Google recognise that, in the landscape of today’s online world, information is being posted at an unprecedented rate across millions of websites across the globe. This new feature is Google’s way of adapting to the increasing impatience of internet users, who see no reason why barriers should be placed in the way of instant, accurate information available at the click of a mouse.

The real-time search results use social networks to extract relevant content related to each search term, whilst articles from freshly updated news sites and personal blogs will also be included in the results. Twitter and Facebook will be cornerstones in this new approach and will allow Google to combat claims that, in years to come, it may become irrelevant as a search tool alongside services such as the two massively popular social networking sites which encourage constant updates and interaction.

This year, we’ve seen a definite shift occur in the world of search marketing, with the focus immediately following several high-profile news events falling on Twitter rather than Google. When the news broke earlier this year that a US Airways jet had made a safe emergency landing on the Hudson in New York, all eyes turned to Twitter, where eye-witnesses and journalists alike were discussing the latest, freshest news on the subject. Google, in light of this event, was viewed as less desirable, since the news story was still unfolding in front of Twitter users’ eyes.

By incorporating real-time search results, Google will hope that they can achieve some of the relevancy that Twitter has managed to attain over the past year.