Google is on a roll this week with some HUGE announcements that effect the very fabric of the Internet, the most important of which is that Google will now be integrating Real Time results culled from social network sites directly into Googles Search Pages.
My first reaction was to grab my tin foil hat and run for cover this could only be a bad thing having an extra "thing" in the search results pushing my pages lower down the results page.
After a night thinking about it and considering how Real Time search can be seen as an opportunity rather than DOOM here are my thoughts.
How Google Real Time search works
Google is now pulling in data from the following social network sites:
Twitter
Myspace
Yahoo Answers
Facebook - (Fan pages only)
Traditional Media / News
When you search for a term lets say "Widgets" Google looks at all the sources of data above and works out which pages currently Buzzing (popular at a given moment) are most relevant to that search term and displays it in a real time search box that auto scrolls.
We can make a few educated guesses as to how the relevancy works, its most likely looks something like this:
Page content > Source of content > Number of links per second > Authority of links shared
Lets break that down:
Page content
This is a blog post about "Widgets" just like any other post on the web
Source of content
This is the domain name where the content is hosted, a post by the New York Times would have a higher weight in the index than say my site TechnicaVita.
Number of links per second
The number of times the link to that content has been shared across all data points per second, this is where even a lower ranked site could conceivably over take a much more powerful site like the New York times. If you have more people sharing your story than they do you are more likely to be the most relevant source.
Authority of links shared
Not all users are equal some have more followers or users actively retweeting or sharing stories, this is likely to be calculated the same way as page rank with links referencing the users building up authority.
Note that even a person with 100 followers could have more authority than a person with 100k followers its all down to how OTHERS link and reference you.
How to use Google Real Time Search to your advantage
So now you might be seeing what I was OPPORTUNITY yes you are going to see a drop in organic search results during times when a Real Time trend is in effect on your keywords.
Now think about how you can use that same problem to your advantage, you just got an opportunity to push articles into keywords you may not normally be able to reach or to push latest articles to the TOP of your keywords for a short time period.
When you consider campaign launches, emergency appeals or just wanting to give an article a bit more prestige Real time search offers some great opportunities.
How to make it happen
Well I need more time to figure that part out, I've only had 14 hours to think all this out and run a couple of experiments, but if you factor in what I've talked about above it should give you a good place to start.
Remember relevancy + Links per second will be the key followed by authority, mostly because right now we have no data on authority to judge how much weight is placed against it.
I would really love to know your thoughts @JohnCarnell
