Real time search

Google recently announced their "real time" search in conjunction with Twitter (and possibly some other social networking sites). This is another special section that appears on the results page for certain types of searches showing appropriate status updates from Twitter.

So what does this mean to you, as a website owner?

Is this a help or a hindrance to you? And can you use it to your advantage?

The first thing you may notice is that there may now be more competition on the results page. The real time search element is just another thing on the results page trying to take clicks away from your website.

The real time search element doesn't appear for all search results, but if your target keywords are one of those do produce real time search results, then you are going to be working a little bit harder optimising your site, just to see the same number of clickthroughs that you might receive on a page without the real time search element.

The effect is only going to be small, but it's something worth considering anyway.

The real time search is another encouraging factor for using social networking sites. No longer do your posts just appear on the social networking sites, but they can also appear on the major search engines too.

If you don't use social networking in your marketing mix, you have no way of utilising this extra advertising.

The real time search only contains the most recent social networking posts on the search subject, so your posts each have a limited time to appear on the search engines. So you'll need to keep posting applicable posts in order to stand any chance of appearing in the real time results.

For advice on all aspects of search engine optimisation, not just the usual avenues, contact OpenGlobal today.