USA SEO Pros: Reporting Industry News

Real-time searching. Many claim to offer it, few actually do. The leader of real-time search so far would have to be Twitter. Many celebrities take part in tweeting, companies do so, and it’s mentioned as a major part SEM from many speakers if you have ever attended a Wordcamp convention. But what is real-time searching exactly? Just as importantly, what isn’t it?

As stated by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, blogging is not one of those things that can be considered real-time searching. This is due, he says, to the amount of time that is taken from its conception to it’s publication. Which could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days depending on the amount of research put into said post. Hardly anything close to what one would consider “real-time”.

So what is real-time searching? Tweeting, of course, is as good as it gets as far as we’ve come technologically. But you can’t exactly search for it on Google and expect to see your best friend eating a peanut butter cookie. One; because it’s just not first page material. Two; because Google is currently unable to index the lot of the tweets that occur on Twitter. The only one capable of doing so thus far is, of course, Twitter itself.

So what is the advantage of real-time searching in comparison to regular search engines? Maybe you want a broad subject in a field such as…lets say computer components. Try that on a real search engine and you would undoubtedly get companies trying to sell you their products, not about any advancements made. The results you find may even be dated a month old or longer. Real-time searching in comparison would give better results in terms of if a company was planning to release a better video card, or was designing a higher-end motherboard. Sure, you are bound to see some mundane results like “lol Hey, I picked up a new 8GB USB. Ted owes me a dollar.”, but this is the internet we’re talking about, random stuff happens.

In my opinion, if Twitter and Facebook were to do a joint effort, the result could only be beaten by computers hooked up to our brains. Tweeting our thoughts in true real time.

The video below is Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter, discussing real-time search and his company.