Google Real-Time Search Debuts
In today’s world of news and information, immediacy is king, so Google’s rollout of a host of new real-time search features is generating lots of talk. Most noticeable is the “Latest Results” scroll that now appears beneath the “News Results” box, dishing out up-to-the-second, related news articles, blogs and posts on social media sites including Twitter, FriendFeed.
For instance, a Google search for the word “crime” returned a “Latest Results” scroll of a Cape Town news story about a South African credit card scam; a Seattle Times post of a Mike Huckabee’s first-person Creators Syndicate piece on why he commuted Maurice Clemmons’ sentence; a Milton Keynes, UK story on a rash of armed jewelry store raids; an asylum.com article about a Houston cop with the badge number 666; and several Tweets about making transmitting HIV a crime, insurance scams, and an anti-Italian quip about the Amanda Knox murder conviction – all that and more in less than 60 seconds.
Google’s real-time algorithms and a deal with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca that allows for utilization of more than a dozen new search technologies make the real-time searches possible. Google also added a “hot topics” feature to its Google Trends to show the most common topics being published to the web in real-time.
Google real-time search also has gone mobile. Smartphone users now can search by a number of new modes including voice, location and sight. Google extended its voice search capabilities on Android devices to recognize Japanese, and is using a smartphone’s location to help users find “what’s nearby,” including restaurants and movie theatres. And Google Goggles, a new visual search application that uses images rather than words, and already recognizes books, wine labels, CD covers, landmarks and more. For instance, snap a photo of a wine label and up pops all the info, including a history, information on the makers and whether that particular wine has a hint of apricot. Happy searching!