With Facebook and other social services (e.g., Twitter) coming online, a new doctrine appeared in the modern internet — networks in real time (real-time web).
Real-time web differs from regular web mainly in the speed of getting information — in real-time web you can use information immediately after it appears. The brightest examples are Twitter and Facebook.
With Twitter’s rise as a microblogging service and its popularisation among users, regular search engine results couldn’t keep up with users’ needs. Google and Yahoo couldn’t index the Twitter message stream fast enough, and Twitter’s search was far from ideal. The hashtag mechanism is well known, but if the user didn’t add a hashtag, the post was findable via Google or Twitter only after some time, not immediately after publication.
Several leading web-search market companies wanted to index Twitter content back at the start of autumn. All major market players made such deals in mid-autumn. But as it turned out, indexing Twitter posts requires a different approach to result formation. Within a few weeks, the three leading search engines — Google, Yahoo, and Bing — unveiled updated functionality. They didn’t just include Twitter posts in the search index — they showed what real-time search means.
The main feature of such search — links obtained from Twitter (or Facebook) search appear in a separate block and don’t mix with regular search results. Additionally, Real-time Search lets you see posts moments after they appear online.
Google Real-time Search’s main advantages — speed and post display without user intervention: you just open the search page. Beyond Twitter, Google works with other social services.
Bing for now searches only Twitter, with a dedicated page. Bing’s advantage — showing the most discussed topics. Beyond “tweets”, the page shows news matching the query, with the option to switch to a Twitter-only results page. The search engine implemented automatic tweet stream updates.
Yahoo! may not yet have made Real-time Search available to all users. However, some users already see the new result format — a “Twitter Results” link appears in the list, leading to a Twitter results page.
