Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What is Google Real-Time Search? Why is it Important for Brands?


Google Real-Time search uses the publishing technologies of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Answers and blogging to populate Google’s search results.

Does this mean my Facebook status updates and latest Tweets could end up the first page of search results within Google?

The answer is yes. Hot or trending topics seem to trigger this effect automatically. Right now if you tweet about Tiger Woods there is a chance your twitter post could be streamed on the front page of Google’s real-time search results for “Tiger Woods.”

At the same time, we have noticed that only popular or trending topics seem to stream automatically on the first page of Google’s search results. A search for “Agency Creative” did not bring up any streaming tweets or status updates, but when we filtered all results to “latest” we found a blog post of ours that had only been published for 23 minutes.


Why does Google want people to know what I am blogging about?

Google is not the only company interested in the average person’s opinions. CNN has been using iReporters for some time now. CNN’s iReporters are every-day people who write and submit stories to CNN.com. CNN then reads through the stories and features stories they feel are relevant on their Web sit..
Brands also care what the average person’s opinion is when it relates to their industry. There are countless brands that have been using social media to see what consumers are saying about them. Google is making it easier for these brands by aggregating social media search results onto one page.


What does this mean for brands?

People have been having conversations within social media about brands for years. Google has now made these conversations transparent and readily available to any person who uses the right keyword or phrase within Google’s search.
As a brand, it is very important to address consumers who talk about your company within social media. If done right, your brand’s participation in social media will have a positive result when compared to your brand’s silence in social media.
Interested to see what people are saying about your brand? Go to Google's home page right now and do a search. If your brand is not a trending topic on the first page of search resluts, click "show options" and then "latest."
Confused? Watch this video to see it in action.

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