USA SEO Pros: Reporting Industry News

Techcrunch’s CrunchUp a few days ago had an interesting panel on real-time search. The panel included SEO heavyweights like Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Google’s Matt Cutts. The discussion surrounded what real-time search is, and what companies like USA SEO Pros are striving for it to be.

It’s good to know what the big whigs of search are doing to stay with the times, and while some of the panel members seemed to avoid specific answers, others weren’t afraid to address the issue head-on.

Cutts from Google’s Web spam team was asked what approach Google is taking to attack the real-time search problem, and all he would say is that they’re working on it as they always have. This was very different from the answer Microsoft’s representative gave when he mentioned Bing’s integration of Twitter results, and specified that real-time search is something they are definitely focusing on.

A few other panel members made some good points when the group was discussing the definition of real-time search and exactly what it is. The consensus when defining real-time search seemed to be that it is a collection of the consciousness of the Internet, where as traditional search engines are the Internet’s memory. Where regular search engines will bring up what has happened in the past, real-time search brings up what is happening in the now. Real-time search is what the Internet is thinking, not what it used to think.

Another point that was brought up is that real-time search needs to distance itself from the rankings that traditional search engines use. While filters should be put in place to get rid of spam and the like, there should be no ranking system when it comes to real-time search results. This is obviously  a matter of debate, but as real-time search gains popularity, this debate will no doubt take place where it needs to, and the resolution that companies come to should be interesting.

Check out video of the panel while they were at CrunchUp below:

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.

We just posted a great article on our main USA SEO Pros company blog about search engine market share and user loyalty. There have been a few articles coming out about how loyal searchers are to one search engine, and how that could work for or against Bing and the other Google competitors.

No one has come close to Google in terms of market share for a long time, so they’ll probably need to come up with something pretty unique in order to compete. The fight has long been for second place, and Yahoo! has held that spot for a while now, except for one day in early June when Bing took the #2 spot for less than a day.

Zack at USA SEO Pros has looked in to the concept of search engine loyalty and has posted a great blog about it. If you’re interested in the material, make sure to check it out, the link is at the beginning of this article.