Google’s roll out of Real Time Search on December 7th, has sparked a lot of conversation and probably even more questions. How does Google decide what is worthy enough of real time search? What gets posted? We attempted to answer these questions and a whole lot more during #blogchat on Sunday evening. Let’s dive right in:
1. What is Real Time Search?
Real time search according to Google:
“… new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. 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.”
In other words, your tweets from Twitter and new blog articles will be appear as “Latest Results.” The latest results are featured in 2 ways.
a. On the search results page below the “News Results” (if there are news results). This appears for very hot topics that are getting a lot of activity.
b. ”Show Options” menu: the list of All Results, click on “Latest” and the live search will appear.
2. What does this mean? per Google:
“Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it’s published on the web.”
It is more reason to tweet well and wisely … (@MackCollier)
The implication for companies is they they can no longer afford not to monitor twitter, since tweets will be added (@MackCollier)
I don’t care if brands are not participating on twitter, but if they’re not at least monitoring twitter it is a problem (@Sue_Anne)
The tweets from twitter users will likely be influenced by whether or not the company is on twitter. (@MackCollier)
Great opportunity to amplify the twitter conversations, or FB for marketers … (@mejohnson1)
Real time search does update trending topics, very popular sites like Mashable so as we are still in the learning phase of what will be made a part of real time search as far as topics and then we have to evaluate what tweets will be posted to that topic.
SEO now becomes SMO – social media optimization (@websuccesdiva)
This is very true as companies will be watching to see what topics are trending and how they can leverage their brand and be a part of the trending topics. Tweets will contain many more hastags (or should I say users will remember to use hashtags in their tweets).
3. How does Google choose what gets a “live search?”(question posed by @EricUrbane).
This was still so new at the time of the blogchat, however unscientific research performed by the author, it seems to be numerous topics. Topics that were hastagged with a considerable amount of activity (ie #blogchat) but within half hour to an hour after activity ceased to the topic, the live search disappeared. Mashable seems to have a constant real time feed (on the home search page) whereas the larger news outlets (CNN, MSNBC) did have real time search but this was under the “Latest” menu bar selection. In other words, the more popular and buzz associated with the topic or organization, the live/real time search. Question that remains unanswered: what about autotweets/scheduled tweets. This will affect how people tweet if these can generate a buzz as people will create numerous accounts and autotweet to get a live search for a brand.
Side note: the tweets that were posted were not based upon the number of followers the tweeter had. It was purely topic related.
Trying to l keep up is great but don’t put feelers out there if they don’t rep your brand RIGHT (@be3d)
I don’t trust Google enough to follow it live. But. I don’t trust twitter search to follow a tweetchat live. (@Sue_Anne)
4. Real Time as a Monitoring Tool.
Monitoring your brand name/mentions/reputation as well as your good and/or services as well as industry terms is really becoming more and more of a necessity as the technology surrounding social media grows. Brand name is a given to see what or in some cases what not is being said about you. The opportunity exists to be able to jump into a trending term and solve a problem or even to throw your $.02 in.
What about small businesses?
The small businesses would not need the SM as much as a publicly known company also. (@HardcoreCanada)
… SMB usually want to build awareness, larger cos have more resources and can do more. (@MackCollier)
Disagree about the small businesses. SMBs might need to monitor social media more.(@Sue_Anne)
One negative comment for a SMB might effect business more than 100 comments for a large brand.(@Sue_Anne)
The small biz is usually creating their conversation, so in my mind they need SM more. (@MSchechter)
Competitors?
Google will able to also monitor your competitors SM outlooks. (@barbaramagana)
5. Facebook – Privacy
Facebook has also inked a deal with Google to have status updates in real time search. This has not yet been implemented as Facebook works out some privacy kinks. This did spark a lot of chatter especially this week when FB changed the privacy settings and had some ambiguous explanation regarding changing your settings “Old Settings” – however just as their seemed to be mass confusion, FB has once again changed the .
… the day that FB forces you to make everything public is the day that they will lose people. (@timjahn)
I don’t think they’ll force people to go public, even Twitter has a private option.(@hacool)
For the most part, privacy/SM problems have just been about what you can lose. (@HardcoreCanada)
General consensus is that people are ok with fan pages being public as they are business pages but personal pages people are keeping private (I have to agree here).
6. As a Small Business what platform is best to be on?
This is a question that so many ask and there is a simple answer – where your target market is. How do you know where they are? there are so many tools out there and having a presence on these tools can generate a conversations which leads to business. Blogchat attendees weighted in on this with some great thoughts.
Just because the tools exist doesn’t mean you should use them. don’t fall for shiny objects.(@MackCollier)
Embracing and utilizing social media are not the same thing.(@shinng)
…better filters are needed to help each individual get the results they need.(@MSchechter)
… if you try and use so many socmed channels you could get burned out rather quickly.(@JDEbberly)
All the resources in the world doesn’t mean you should do everything.(@MSchechter)
I think it is about less resources and more about fishing where the fish ar.(@Eric_Urbane)
7. Final notes.
There is a conversation happening on social media platforms. Just having a twitter account and sending out tweets is not joining the conversation. Participating in #@blogchat is taking part in the conversation. Enhancing your customer service department and solving customers problems via Twitter is conversing, but trying to get a topic to trend when no-one else is responding is not taking part in the conversation. One sided communication.
Google real time search is still in its infancy and there will be the good, bad and the ugly that comes out of this as what is gets live searched? What happens with a person who tries to bury the competitor with slanderous tweets? This is yet to be determined but for now, as marketers, we can watch and see what happens. Real time search may go away faster than teenage acne or may stay and be built upon.
New to #blogchat? Blogchat is a twitter chat hosted by @MackCollier each Sunday evening at 9pm, eastern time that discusses topics as they relate to blogging, search engine optimization and social media marketing. Feel free to stop on by and get to know the group!
Full transcript for #blogchat, Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009