One of the hot topics for Google these days is implementing a functional real-time search. There's no denying that the success of Twitter is the draw for this need. Increasingly audiences want search results tailored around current events, skipping sites with more established content.
Relevancy vs Trends
In a recent article at The SEO Company, Dave Eaves explored some intriguing results where a blogger managed to get onto the first page of Google for the highly competitive term "porn" (we're sure Dave was just doing research). The blogger's first page ranking lasted only a couple of days, as there was a temporary link spike for one particular post that had been written and spread through the internet.
Google has clearly been tinkering with it's black box algorithm, adjusting search results to better reflect current events. If a new page gets a high number of backlinks from trusted sources in a short time frame, it's fair to assume that the page is worthy of a temporary boost in the SERPs.
The typical use for Google Trends has been to observe search terms that have become popular in the past months or years. This new real-time approach underscores their efforts to quantify trends in hours and possibly even minutes.
On a related note, is anybody else surprised that neither Facebook or Google has bought Twitter yet?
Thanks Will this was a really interesting article. I wonder why google went mad for an article on ‘ceiling porn’ and ranked it like that? That must be the most competitive phrase around. Real-Time search results sound great for the user, I doubt it would affect much of my work either so bring it on!
ps. research? …hmmm lol
if you can’t beat them join them right? I’m sure Google wants to slowly allow for a real time search method into their system just like Twitter.
I am sure about this… Google prediction for the hot search topics for the months is already gaining the popularity and a lot of blogs are filled with information regarding it then in this case… and real time search results are another practice that Google will surely uplift to keep the momentum of its reputation in the industry same.
Its a good news for the searchers in google, that google is approaching real time search results. But i think its not for the webmaster.The way to google success for small websites are getting harder and harder for the webmasters, i dont know where this situation end up in 2020, I have a question/ doubt arise in my mind whether we can optimize our pages in google results in future lets say another 3 or 4 years to come. I think as far as google, everything going to be automatic,just build up a page aligning with google webmaster guidelines you are there on the top according to your pagerank this is going to happen in near future. No need to optimize.