Relevant Results on real-time search

(photo credit Michel Filion)

Relevant Results blog, part of the CNET News site, have posted a thorough and engaging piece on the current state of the real-time Web.

It is interesting to see how the major search engines are filtering real-time results, determining what is relevant and when real-time search becomes important. As summed up by Tom Krazit on Relevant Results:

The major search players have the luxury of comparing spikes in their search query logs with spikes in certain topics from the feeds they receive from real-time information sources like Twitter. When activity around the same topic is spiking on both search query traffic and real-time publishing platforms, the search companies know something is happening.

Moving from here, the point when a significant event is happening, to deciding which post, Tweets and news articles are most pertinent is the real trick of real-time. As the search engines get to grips with relevancy in this respect, it is clear that a myriad of factors from quality of Followers to semantic estimates will need to be taken into consideration.

With Bing, Google, and Yahoo all throwing their weight behind real-time search, doing deals with the various platforms, then we can expect to see our search results evolve over time:

So if search engines are to remain relevant themselves, they’ll need to make sense of this content. And unless social-media networks are able to make their content discoverable, they won’t turn into the types of content-discovery engines that their public-relations people like to imagine are already here.

For a wider picture on the state of real-time, we recommend you check out the full article here and let us know you thoughts in the comments below.

Leave a Comment April 9, 2010