Google forayed into real-time search by announcing a deal with Twitter last year. However, real-time search results in Google went much ahead than just displaying results from Twitter and included web results too.
I remember reading a post by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land about his request to Google to add a dedicated real-time search results page and it looks like Google finally heeded his advice and announced the introduction of a dedicated real-time search page at http://www.google.com/realtime.
The difference between the regular search page and real-time page is that you will see relevant results which are freshly indexed on Google about the keywords you are searching for.
The new real-time search page includes several new enhancements including:
- Geographically refining results based on your location
- Conversations view to follow discussions in real-time, which will include re-tweets and replies. This will allow you to view a real-time discussion easily
- An update to Google Alerts to stay informed about a topic of your choosing
The new real-time dedicated page can be found at http://www.google.com/realtime, however, you might see a 404 error since Google is slowly rolling out this new feature to users. What do you think of the new real-time search page? Do let us know. To get started watch a video of how to use Real-time search in Google in the embedded video below.
Update: The above URL is still giving a 404 error, but you can visit this URL http://www.google.com/realtime?esrch=RealtimeLaunch::Experiment to view the results, here is a screenshot of real-time search results in action.
Looks pretty neat, but can be pretty overwhelming for a new user. What do you think?
