We knew it was only a matter of time, real-time that is, before Google started indexing Twitter and other social media messages for its search results.
Today, Google made it a reality.
"Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before," Google posted on its blog.
"When they are relevant, we'll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page."
Imagine that...real-time Google search results for posts in Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. Of course, Bing beat Google to the punch a few weeks ago.
Which social media posts will appear in search results?
According to Google's Amit Singhal, Google's real-time search offers not just a stream of data, but an organized stream filtered of spam and other irrelevant information. The key to keeping the updates relevant is that Google judges “author quality,” “probability of relevance” and “query hotness,” according to Singhal. “That’s what real-time search is all about,” he said.
How many are finally going to jump on the social media bandwagon now?
According to Google, users can click on "Latest results" or select "Latest" from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google.
Also, you can filter results to see only "Updates" from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices.
In addition, Google added "hot topics" to Google Trends
to show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in
real-time. With this improvement and a series of other interface
enhancements, Google Trends is graduating from Labs.
The
new features will be rolling out in the next few days and will be
available globally in English.
You can try them out today by visiting Google Trends and clicking on a "hot topic," which in most cases will bring you to a search results page with the new real-time feature.
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