December 7, 2009 (CAP Newswire) — Google announced today that its search engine results would now automatically update, giving web users “real-time” results to their search engine results pages (SERPs).
The move apparently comes as response to criticism that Google has not kept up with the "instant publishing revolution", as exemplified by Twitter and Facebook. Microsoft’s Bing search engine implemented real-time searches last month.
Writing for the tech publication Wired, Ryan Singel also states that Google is trying to compete more with social media sites by partnering with MySpace to “include status updates from that social network into real-time search as well”.
“Google Real Time search is Google’s relevance technology meeting the real-time web,” Singel quoted Google Fellow Amit Singhal. “There is so much information being generated, that relevance is the key to any product and that’s where Google comes in.”
So, what’s the criteria for these automatic updates? “’Author quality’, ‘probability of relevance’ and ‘query hotness’,” says Singhal. “That’s what real-time search is all about.”
The announcement marks part of Google’s ambitious (and somewhat on-the-defensive-sounding) “33 different search innovations in 67 days,” said Google’s VP for search, Marissa Mayer. Whether or not all of these improvements sticks, they should provide useful to online marketing professionals and affiliate marketers alike.
The Wired article features much more detail. Check it out here.