Mountain View, California — Another day, another service has been unfolded from the house of world’s most popular search engine leader. Google Inc. on Thursday strengthened its efforts to make its Web-search results timelier, for users who want to sift through news, comments, further embraced the world of tweets, status updates, and on-the-fly posts with a website devoted to finding “real-time” content as it hits the Internet.
The service, which introduced its own homepage at google.com/realtime, is being unleashed in 40 countries builds on features that the Internet powerhouse has been adding incrementally to its online query service. Also, it can be used separately from the company’s main search engine to help people find the latest Web conversations on regional and global hot topics.
The service culls messages posted by users of Twitter and Google’s own Twitter-like service, Google Buzz. It also includes messages from certain users of social-networking services such as Facebook Inc. and News Corp.’s MySpace. The posts appear in a continuously updating news feed. Searches from this destination still take you to the updates section of a regular Google search.
“Real time content is often one of the best sources of information about what is happening right now,” Google product manager Dylan Casey said in a statement, while announcing the new real-time search home page.
“We are handing over people more tools to drill down into these results.”
Nevertheless, realtime search on Google itself is not novel, there are still some latest attribute Google has revealed along with the homepage. Casey writes:
On the new homepage you will discover some excellent tools to help you polish and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. So if you are traveling to Los Angeles this summer, you can check out tweets from Angelenos to get ideas for activities happening right where you are.
Furthermore, we have included a conversations view, making it easy to keep track of a discussion on the real-time web. Oftentimes, a single tweet develops into a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new “full conversation” feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance. We organize the tweets from oldest to newest and indent so you quickly see how the conversation developed.
The newly released service is similar to that of Google’s search pages which is dedicated to pictures or videos, the new site is customized to comments, images or other public content posted at online social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace.
“With the emergence of these platforms it is easier for people to publish content, and there is more content on the Web,” Casey said.
“These great tools simplifies the tasks for people to get speedy access to that. Whether it is a movie that is just released or you see helicopters flying over, this shows what people are saying about that right now,” added Casey.
Additionally, Google also added “updates” content to Google Alerts. You can now create an alert specifically for updates to receive an email anytime a keyword appears in Twitter or other sources Google uses for realtime search. You can also set them to email you once a day or once a week so your inbox does not get flooded.
Nevertheless, Google’s effort emphasizes the importance of real-time data on social media, in an increasingly competitive Internet search arena which it dominates. Also, the move broadens the Internet search leader’s determination to compete with Microsoft Corp.’s Bing in letting Web surfers track up-to-the-minute comments and postings and could also be a useful tool for organizations tracking public opinion on everything from a movie to a new product.