Google's New Real Time Search Streams

Google upped the relevance factor of its search results with the launch of a new real-time feature that integrates live updates from blogs, news sites, Twitter, Facebook, and more.

Now, when you enter a search term like "Hotel Taj Mumbai" into Google, you'll not only get results from across the web, you also get the option of checking out a real-time stream of what people are saying about the Hotel right that minute in the news and blog posts, or on popular social networking sites like Twitter and FriendFeed. Besides the obvious coolness factor, the new feature makes it possible to get news related to your search term almost the instant it happens instead of waiting hours or days for web sites to get indexed.

This is a pretty awesome way to find out about breaking news or what people are saying about the latest blockbuster film. Imagine hearing about a traffic jam on the bridge right from passengers who Tweet about being stuck in traffic, or getting the skinny on movie reviews as people talk about it on FriendFeed. It's basically integrating what we like best about Twitter directly into Google. To turn it on for search results, just:



Click on "Latest results" or select "Latest" from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google. You can also filter your results to see only "Updates" from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you're in line to buy tickets.

Google partnered with Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, Jaiku, and Identi.ca to pull status updates into search results from all those services. Google says the new service will be available to everyone in the next few days, but check out the video above in the meantime to see for yourself what it does.

It's really amazing to see live updates in search results, but there's plenty of people that don't give a hoot about what the folks on Twitter or Facebook are talking about. It will also be interesting to see how Google keeps the signal-to-noise ratio down when huge news breaks and people everywhere are blogging, posting, and sometimes unintentionally spreading false information.