Real Time Search and Implications for SEO

The popular social networking site Twitter is heralding in an important new trend in search engine usage, the quest for fresh, up to the minute content. It is just one of many social media site posting aggregators. That might not inspire the average marketer yet real time search for products, services and information is of interest to many consumers. Where there is exposure to consumers, there will be SEO.

Twitter is perhaps the first and most prominent real time search engine. Twitter search allows users to search for very recent, up to the minute news and topics and see others comments. The time between content being published and found by users is shortening. The quest for fresh means marketers may be able to expose their brands and solutions by generating commentary and optimizing their updated content. Optimization tuned to the real time search engines algorithms is key since millions of pages and posts are produced daily. That's a lot of competition.

Static Search Not Relevant to Right Now

Real time search contrasts with Google’s search engine (static search) which is very slow to update pages and present very recent content. In some cases, web pages and other content take a long time to be presented to searchers and the cached copies of pages are months old. Static search is stable and reliable, in fact you ge the exact same search query results from one month to the next. For a lot of searchers, that isn't very helpful.

Real time search engines have a bonafide way of creating new search users and this presents something of a threat to Google, Yahoo, Bing and numerous shopping search engines. There are hurdles however on the horizon, including spam and speed of returning search results.  Once these new search services become popular, spammers will begin to pollute the results with commercially targeted pages and postings thus reducing the quality of results. The lack of trust and authority in their algorithms makes many people discount the current group of real time search engines. Quality is the top issue they face. If you do a search on Collecta, you'll see a lot of low quality results that lack a proper description to let the searcher know a little about the post before they click through. Collecta needs snippets.

Currently real time search is in its infancy as it is used within the microblogging community to help people stay in touch. These processes and systems will definitely be extended to other areas of search including local, shopping, and even classified ads. It’s all about speed.

Using the Collecta real time search engine, people could do continuous searches about the Tour de France. Tour de France fans could get an close look at events as they happened with a combination of Tweets, Flickr and TwitPic images from spectators. The same would be true of other sporting events such as US Open Tennis, World Series, SuperBowl, and any major news story. People love to be informed and the first to know and share their comments.

Shopping for Products in Real Time

Real time search will allow shoppers to find the latest sales, bargains, product introductions, and user opinions. For instance, when users are discussing their iPhone or other application, since it is in real time, the searcher may be able to contact the person who posted the content of interest right away. That freshness can create very helpful dialogs for people who are looking for solutions. It also presents a timely opportunity for service providers and product sellers to reach consumers right away. Real time search can create a real time connection between buyers and sellers and it can allow companies to monitor what is being said about their products and companies right now.

Real Time search will present a unique opportunity to catch consumers in the moment as they're considering booking a hotel room, vacation, buying a tennis racquet or cell phone, finding a job, inquiring about a medical treatment, checking out the latest films and commentary about hem, and restaurant menus, or buying a new home up for sale. Time is of the essence and the speediest will be the victors. Of course, speed is a planned process and that's where optimization will come in. Out of a thousand recent real time search items published, which ones will get seen? --- those that have been intelligently optimized.

Real time search engines include Twitter, Scoopler, Friendfeed, and Collecta. Advertising on Twitter hasn't worked well apparently, however Twitters search engine will create excellent opportunities for exposure, on topic and in real time. That immediacy has marketers keen to exploit it however the demands of real time search engine optimization will be higher.

We're in a world controlled by search algorithms and the immediacy of real time search will bring respect back to organic search and away from Google ads.

SEO For Real Time Search

People search using a huge array of keywords and this represents the many different angles they view a topic. The topics of interest in social search engines is more focused on people and entertainment and news. The topic will be very specific which is in contrast to common SEO practices which optimize for general popular keywords.

In social networking optimization, a great deal of specific content is generated and it's commentary that is personal and generally non-commercial. Blatant sales pitches are despised by users so references to products and services tends to be general and to provide something useful to the user rather than, for instance, a shopping cart page.

In real time search, it's all about timing, speed, and frequency of publication. Exposure on a massive scale where a published posting gains exposure to millions of people interested in a particular topic obvious has revenue potential.

Real Time Search SEO takes skill and timing and perhaps a deeper involvement with the content itself. An SEO with research and writing skills can help you access this new burgeoning opportunity in search engine optimization.

Do you have any questions or comments? Leave your comment on the Bay Street SEO Blog.

Real Time Search Engines