After nagging endlessly about the abysmal search facility on twitter I can’t resist being very enthusiastic about Google Real Time Search.
Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
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I had a chat with some friends yesterday on this (they did me the honour of inviting me to their podcast #NoNameCast – sadly only available in Greek) and we had a bit of a debate on whether this is a gimmicky thing for Google.
I certainly don’t think it is gimmicky even though I am looking at it from the point of view of Communications, Public Affairs and Policy professionals rather than users in general.
Immediate access to what is going on
It might not give me time to truly analyse but I’ll know on the spot. Invaluable if a big story is breaking and you work in a Press Office.
Immediate access to blog posts
You won’t have to wait for your press mentions service to report to you once a week. If you need to know now you can find out now.
Getting a ‘feeling’ for what’s going on
Do not underestimate how important it is for comms people to have a ‘feeling’ for what is going on out there. Sometimes it’s equally important with the more substantiated view that serious analysis can give you.
Be on top of the ‘now’
Sometimes it’s important to understand what is going on now. This is not to underestimate the value of good analysis and substantiated research. It’s just that you may be on your way to a meeting or a brainstorming session and you’d like to understand the ‘now’ of the equation.
Can’t wait to see how this will develop.
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Read on:
Relevance meets the real-time web by Amit Singhal on The Official Google Blog
Google finally gets real-time by David Meerman Scott on Web Ink Now
