The changes to Google, otherwise known as the Caffeine update, have been in the minds of most internet marketers for a while. These changes have slowly been filtering their way through into Google's results. One the most anticipated features is the addition of real time search using results from social media sites as part of Google's blended, or Universal, search results.
Yesterday morning the BBC reported that real time search had gone live for users of Google, featuring live feeds from both Twitter and MySpace. This can be seen in the SERP for ‘Christmas’:
The above image shows two feeds:
- A more common generic news feed which we have seen for a while. This according to Google will now be updated more regularly.
- A Twitter feed box which is now included in some Google search results but not all. This box provides a live feed from Twitter relating to your selected search term.
The Twitter feed shown above automatically scrolls through latest tweets and offers you the option of pausing and scrolling through recent tweets.
As a result, we will no doubt see a lot more Twitter spam targeting the most popular searches. From the more professional marketers we will hopefully see more eye-catching tweets aimed at Google searchers.
Only time will tell how this will affect both Twitter and Google and how real time search will develop. I look forward to seeing how Google defines "quality" within its real time search results in order to decide which static search result we see.
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