Real time search is something which is fairly new in the world of search engines and up until now not many people have tailored their search engine optimisation strategies towards searches of this nature. Most companies will have touched on real time searches within their social media optimisation even if they do not use the real time approach within their standard search marketing. As popular and as forward thinking as real time searches are though, there is debate as to whether we should be focusing our attention on real time searching or sticking to the more traditional tried and tested methods which work so well.

Of course, the boom in social networking makes real time information so popular but it is worth putting yourself in the shoes of the consumer and think about how you go about your daily searches. Unless you are looking for a particular news story or press release from a company, then consider how likely it is that real time search is applicable to you. The chances are, that if a user goes to Google or Bing to look for a local catering company, then they do not require the most up to date and newest content, what they need is the most applicable and reputable company to meet their needs.

News is obviously a major angle when it comes to real time searches, and there is no mistaking that being one of the first to announce a piece of crucial information can have a significant benefit on your website ranking and click through rate. However, if you again put yourself in the eye of the consumer, you are probably more likely to visit your favourite news pages or well known news sections to find out this information. With many well known news pages offering regular updates via email or screen flash, it could be more beneficial for your stories to be linked to these sites rather than a real time search engine. Backlink or direct link, it is all traffic to your website in the end.

One area where real time search is very applicable is in a gossip or social media sense. If the nature of your business is concerned with celebrity gossip, or just general chat about specific events, then real time will work better for you. Similarly, running online competitions or creating an online event or conversation topic requires real time searching, especially if you are looking to encourage audience participation.

There is definitely a place for real time searching within the online search world, however it could be said that it is more applicable within a social sense as opposed to a business sense. Most companies are involved in social blogging or microblogging to some degree, but let us not forget that if the day comes when instant updates are not so popular, we do not want our standard searches to be left behind. The key is to never forget who your base audience is, have fun and experiment with real time searching, but do not let it take over.

It is crucial for those involved with search engine optimization to keep an eye on all the relevant developments in the sphere of search. By doing so, it is possible to exploit new opportunities and meet fresh challenges with the highest chances of achieving consistent and enduring success. From time to time, something original gives the SEO community pause for thought and sparks off a new wave of proactive development. It is arguably the case that real-time search fits closely into this category.

To maintain and extend their popularity amongst users, the search engines are driven to upgrade the quality of the services they offer on a frequent basis. Users come to the search engines with one main thing on their minds, swift access to relevant information in response to their specific query. While users are often very satisfied with what the search engines deliver, some of them have been disappointed in the past because their queries resulted in them being shown what they perceived as out-of-date data. Depending on the nature of the search, there can be a genuine requirement to get results which are relevant in terms of the temporal dimension.

Google, as the most dominant search engine, was quickly conscious of the emergent difficulty and proceeded to engage in innovation to meet the expectations of some of its less satisfied users. Google aims to provide its users with real-time search results where that is an appropriate and feasible thing to do. However, the practical hindrances to such a project are considerable. Not to be deterred by these obstacles, Google has demonstrated its flexibility by working with the new social media in order to make progress in this tricky area.

Social networking has had a transformative impact on the way millions of us socialise. Facebook and Twitter have accumulated massive audiences. Google perceived that the vast amount of content being added to sites like these was of potential use in the struggle to provide real-time search to its users. By operating smartly in this fashion, Google has managed to get content from social networking sites on to the search results where its relevance has been established. For example, information pulled from Twitter may be found on the first page of the search engine results page, which can be a boon for a firm connected with the query in this manner. The user may appreciate that a firm which is still in operation may be listed in this way. This ‘win, win’ solution would not have been possible if Google was not prepared to engage positively with big social media players for mutual benefit.

It is important to note the kind of content which Google seems to be prioritising when offering real-time search. It appears to favour high grade content which ticks the classic SEO boxes of relevancy and accuracy. It also seems to consider the profile of the firm concerned when the ‘decisions’ are being made. Real-time search is an exciting area where SEO and SMM may be converging, so working with experts in these fields is really recommended to online firms.

Real time searching seems to be a phrase which we are hearing more and more about. With such a buzz of excitement surrounding real time searches, should we be focusing our search engine optimization and SMM techniques a little more towards real time searches or are our old and trusted relevance ranking searches safe for a while longer?

Real time searching is pretty much what it says on the tin, searches concerned with the here and now. The searches which we are used to rank search results in terms of how relevant they are. This might be recognised by the number of keywords which match what the searcher has written in the search box, or the relevance of the meta descriptions compared to what the user is looking for.

Real time searching still concerns itself with relevance to a point, as of course the main way people search is by topic. However, most recent posts which bear any match to your search will show up first, as opposed to the most relevant. As you can imagine, tweets and Facebook status updates play quite a major role in real time search results, however it is not just applicable from a social perspective, news data and press releases also feature highly and there are multiple benefits to real time searches.

Take for instance somebody on Twitter posting details of the recent earthquakes which have hit the world, the speed in which this information is spread across the world is phenomenal. Television and radio stations are extremely good at getting up to date news and information out there, however they cannot compete with the speed and magnitude of the likes of Twitter. To hear a radio or television newsflash you need to be listening or watching, but to read a tweet you just need to be logged on or have you mobile phone with you, which most people do all the time.

There have always been a few search engines in place which pride themselves on being real time search engines. Oneriot and tweetmeme being two of the most popular. These sites shows you the most up to date results which have some resemblance to your desired search. How popular these search engines are is debatable, however with the likes of both Google and Bing announcing last year that Tweets would be included as part of search engine results if applicable, it looks as though there is more to real time searching than we first originally thought – all of which has an impact on your SEO campaign.

To stop us being too serious, it is worth highlighting that real time searching is fun. The way in which your search can be interpreted within a real time search and the results which are shown are often hilarious, yet at the same time bizarrely interesting. It never ceases to amaze us some of the random things people tweet about, and if it is that sort of thing that floats your boat then real time searching could be worth a thought in your next social media marketing strategies.