'Net Features : real-time search

Google+ Updates: Real-Time Search, Hashtags and YouTube

Michael Garrity — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, Google released a video featuring its Senior Vice President of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, announcing that Google+ is going to be getting big updates in both real-time search and hashtag support.

The company's social network, which thus far hasn't exactly found mainstream success, will now feature search results that update instantly (the service just got its own search capabilities last month) and hashtags that are clickable. These clickable tags will then take users to search results for the terms.

"We're trying to make it easier to follow and contribute to live events on Google+," says Gundotra, "Including breaking news, sporting events and many others."

When it comes to search, relevance and punctuality are what drive this new update; now that Google has a unique pool of crowd-created information, it can produce real-time results. In fact, G+ posts have already started being integrated into Web search results. (Maybe that's bad timing after employee Steve Yegge's harsh critique of the social network on Google+ yesterday.)

In other G+ news, Google has made it possible for users to link their YouTube accounts with their Google+ profiles. Now videos shared with you on the social network will be added directly to your YouTube homepage.

Linking the two profiles is a matter of going to the "Sharing" tab in your YouTube account settings; there will be a link prompting you to "manage all your Google connected accounts" and from there you can join the two.

This isn't the first time that Google has incorporated G+ into one of their many other services (or even with YouTube, which has already had Hangouts integration), but it is probably the biggest merger since Plus accounts were linked to Google Docs.

Bit.ly Launches Real-Time Social Search Beta

Michael Garrity — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:30:00 GMT

In an effort to continue to expand its role on the Web, popular link shortening service Bit.ly just launched a new beta search platform and "reputation monitoring service."

The company will be using information gathered over time by crawling every URL that it has shortened to check each one's potential to go viral. This allows the company to provide a look at trending content and, more impressively, to predict the future by declaring that content which is going to trend through user search.

According to a blog post by the company, "Instead of pagerank we're using a different filter -- for any given search query, we display the stories that we predict will get the most attention over the next 24 hours. Then we use bitly's analytics to refine our predictions in realtime."

This is all a part of the company's growing realtime social search initiative.

"Many pages are so new, so fresh, that they don't have any pagerank," says the company on its blog. "Often [stories] reach a broad audience on social media before more conventionally-authoritative newsgatherers amplify their messages."

The idea of this realtime search effort is to act as an "early-warning system" to project upcoming swings in what users are saying about specific brands, which is what sets it apart from traditional clipping or trending engines.

The current beta version is only available for the services paying Enterprise customers.

OneRiot Adds Facebook to Real-time Search Results

Linc Wonham — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:18:00 GMT

OneRiot’s real-time search engine has added Facebook data to its results, giving the startup company an enormous boost to its real-time search API. OneRiot is an advertising marketplace and real-time search engine that already indexes data from Twitter, Digg, MySpace and other social networks.

Searches through the OneRiot API will now include publicly shared links from Facebook’s nearly half a billion users. The company’s real-time search results are based on a social resonance algorithm it calls PulseRank, provided through partnerships with both Yahoo! and Microsoft. OneRiot also has an advertising service called RiotWise, which can be integrated into Web-based and mobile apps through the enhanced API.

It’s a significant development in the emerging real-time Web marketplace, coming just on the heels of Google’s release of its amped-up search index called Caffeine. Scoopler, Topsy and Tweetmeme are other examples of up-and-coming players in the real-time search space, but OneRiot’s impressive API now powers over 100 real-time applications.

Facebook Connect Driving Engagement, Website Visits

Mike Phillips — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:38:00 GMT

Facebook Connect launched one year ago and, so far, it's having a positive impact for website developers. In its simplest form, Facebook Connect allows website visitors to log in to websites and share content with a click - sending that website's content to the user's wall, which is then viewable by all of their friends and social connections, or as a private message. But it goes beyond that. Facebook Connect can also work with mobile devices, desktops and even gaming consoles. As users become more accustomed to sharing content through Facebook and essentially carrying their Facebook identities with them as they surf the Web, website owners have the possibility of their content being spread to a massive audience, very easily. This might have something to do with Facebook now being the Web's third-largest site where users watch online video. Logically, if you produce Web video, you will certainly want a Facebook Connect button right next to it so users can share it with their network.

From Facebook's Ethan Beard, who leads the Facebook Developer Network: "From social widgets like the Comments Box, Share button and Live Stream Box to deeper integrations including log in, Facebook Connect is helping developers drive more traffic to their site, ease the registration process, and provide a more engaging experience for users. By adding social elements through Facebook Connect, websites in a variety of verticals are revolutionizing industries."

Below are some pretty impressive numbers that show not only the scope of implementation of Facebook Connect, but also the potentional. Either way, there are more than 350 million Facebook users, and however they decide to share content is good for website owners. News like this is even more important in light of Google's recently launched real-time search. Learn more about Facebook Connect and how to implement it on your site.

More than 80,000 websites and devices have implemented Facebook Connect
More than 60 million Facebook users are engaging with Facebook Connect on external services each month
Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect

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Google's Real-Time Search Changes Everything

Mike Phillips — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:59:00 GMT

The real-time Web is here. Google has officially jumped into real-time search, taking full advantage of its recent partnerships and changing the face of search engine optimization. Conduct a search on Google and you might now see a sizable part of the page dedicated to real-time search. This is a scrolling, live update of content from across the Web about your query and one of the most significant public-facing changes Google has made in a long time. It's also one of the biggest changes to SEO (as it applies to Google) in recent history.

The real-time updates - or "Latest results" - take up a significant portion of screen space. After the sponosored listings at the top of the page, then the top organic result comes the real-time updates. In some cases, the box is also very close to the fold. In short, as it stands today, your company's organic listings might have already changed dramatically. While the total number of results does not seem to have changed, you might have dropped below the fold. That means checking your search positions immediately, and getting to work on improving them.

Below is a Google results page for "Obama health care." The first result is the top result, then you will see the real-time results. The bottom result after the real-time box is just above the fold. This is a hot topic, so keep in mind that not all queries will produce real-time results, or results will be ordered differenlty. For example, a search for "zhu zhu" (a popular toy this holiday season) shows real-time results, but at the very bottom of the page. Also impacting the position of real-time results and normal organic listings will be the number of paid search results.

One thing is for certain - Web professionals' stock in Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca just went through the roof. Those companies are now partners, waist-deep in the Google mix; and that's where many of the real-time results are coming from. In short, if you're not on some or all of these networks, it's time to get started. And you must go beyond just making a profile. These real-time results will take into account your social graph - the connections you make and your "authority" in the space, as well as the content you provide on these networks. We're talking quality here. Businesses must provide value to their social connections. For example, if you tweet an important piece of information and it gets re-tweeted by your followers, you can bet Google will take notice. Google will be examining accounts' social stock and including those in the updates - on the first page of Google. You will also notice that real-time results are not limited to social networks, but include blogs and other websites. Content creation and optimization (creative copy, keyword-friendliness, etc.) becomes a mission-critical business objective.

It will also be interesting to see if these new partner networks get flooded with "content noise," once publishers realize the opportunity. It's quite possible the personal space users feel they have within networks like Facebook will be come serious spam magnets.

Don't miss Website Magazine's February issue. Included is Dante Monteverde's SEO Corner, focusing on optimization for Google's Social Search and real-time results.

Below is a brief video of Google's latest innovation. It's not hard to see the impact looming for Web professionals.

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Taptu, OneRiot Partner for Real-Time Search on Mobile

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Mobile search engine Taptu and realtime search engine OneRiot have launched a, what else, realtime search application for mobile devices.

Taptu leverages OneRiot’s realtime search API which will give users access to current information, links and conversations about events as they happen across the Web on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing sites. The service is available on the major touch devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch, G1, Nokia 5800, and the BlackBerry Storm 1.

“Increasingly, people want constant access to new information – a need that can be even more pressing when on the go. Mobile is an ideal platform for the discovery of realtime information and we are thrilled to partner with Taptu to start offering users the power of realtime search on their mobile devices.”

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