Google Introduces Real-Time Search

At an event on Monday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, Google fellow Amit Singhal announced that his company was introducing real-time search results to its search engine.

In a move which CNET news confirms has resulted from deals reached with Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, and which the Wall Street Journal says is designed to fight off competition from the likes of Microsoft and its search engine Bing, Mr Singhal confirmed that in future visitors to Google's search engine will see updates to their searches appearing before their very eyes. Using data drawn from over one billion web pages the changes to its search facility introduced by Google will mean that users no longer have to refresh a search to view the very latest results. The BBC quotes Mr Singhal as saying as he announced the launch of real-time searches, updates from Twitter will be incorporated immediately whilst it will be 2010 before Facebook and MySpace updates are included:

Information is being created at a pace I have never seen before and in this environment, seconds matter.

There is so much information being generated out there that getting you relevant information is the key to the success of a product like this. It's all about relevance, relevance, relevance

During his presentation Mr Singhal, who joined his California-based employer in 2000, referred to the real-time search facility, which should be available world-wide by the middle of the week, as "Google relevance technology meets the real-time Web". No details of the financial aspects of Google's deals with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, the latter site is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, have been revealed, although Facebook has stated that the deal with Google will not see it generate any profit. On the same day that Google also introduced Google Goggles, which allows Internet users to base a search on a picture they have taken on their cellphone/mobile phone rather than on words, the company's vice president of search and user experience, Marissa Mayer, said that real-time search had come as something of a surprise and, according to CNET News, she acknowledged that Google had not had the necessary foresight to see it coming. Talking to the BBC Ms Mayer, with Google for 10 years and in 2008 the youngest woman ever to make Fortune's Most Powerful Women list at the age of 33, emphasized the significance from a technical viewpoint of real-time search, adding:

The updates (on Twitter) are so truthful and so in the moment. That is a really, really powerful part of this. Are you at this event right now? Are you on this ski slope right now? And because of that 'right now' element of it , this is hugely valuable data

Available too on the likes of the iPhone and the Google Android operating system real-time search has been described by Bas van den Beld, Chief Editor at Searchcowboys.com, as "great" and "a next step in search". Despite the challenge posed by Microsoft's Bing search engine, which has recently concluded a deal with Yahoo, Google still enjoys a 65% share of the search market.