Google Update: Latest Results
Google has announced its search results will display a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web, pulling updates from Twitter and Facebook, or postings from blogs and news sites.
Latest Results is yet another addition to Google’s already cluttered search page.
Many apologies in advance, but if you haven’t seen it in action, I thought I would demonstrate by doing a search the key phrase X Factor.
Taking a look at this snip of the Google results, you will find my Twitter post mentioning X Factor in the new Latest Results section:
I’m preparing my new Social Media Marketing Training course, and I think the big question for small businesses for Latest Search are:
What phrases are going to trigger Latest Results? At the moment it appears to be predominantly entertainment and news stories. As an example, the BA Strike is triggering Latest Results. On the other hand, Swine flu triggers News results, and Blog posts, but no Latest News.
What kind of content could your business generate to take advantage of this ephemeral content in the search results? Search engine optimisation doesn’t just mean web pages, but also means blog postings, and YouTube content, and Images, and now more than ever participating in the social media sphere.
What UK Centric phrases will trigger Latest News? It’s early days, and we will need to wait to see just how Google integrates this live stream into the search results. Google provides a service called Google Trends that shows hot topics, but I just don’t believe today’s UK data. Are so many British searchers really looking for this kind of data:
Learn more by taking a look at Google’s video introduction to Google Latest Results:
December 16th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Susan, had the opportuinity to attend SES Chicago event last week and this Live Search addin was mentioned quite a lot. Not in a good way, many references were made to the fact that it could be very easy to manipluate the search results by throing lots of twitter posts from various account sto raise the profile and also the fact that the use of short urls – masking the real link may actually result in users going to inappropiate places.
It definately adds a new dimension to the use and power of social media though….
James