Google's Real-time Search: Be informed in no time, or at least very little time.

In a recent post I gave my opinion about the problems I see with real-time search. I do concede that Google probably is aware of all my concerns surrounding real-time search and that they probably feel the benefits it provides outweigh the problems it may cause, and so do I.

In my previous posting on this issue I claimed that a lot of the information coming through the real-time feed does not hold a lot of relevance in that some of it either was either not all that credible, or was simply capitalizing on a particular hot topic on Twitter, as well as all the random chatter from Twitter users. I admit that this may particularly have been the case because I used Tiger Woods as my search example. Using Tiger, or any celebrity or that matter, would have had the same results through a real-time search as what I found.

The Relevance Test

For this article I took a look at another issue that has a lot of conversation surrounding it; Healthcare Reform.

With this topic, as may be expected there were a lot more links to known news sites and less twitter banter about the topic. I found several interesting articles within a matter of minutes, seconds for some, of their posting.

Here are three headlines I found while searching, two of which I found to be very interesting and informative, the third supports my earlier blog argument about the problems of real-time search relevancy, in this case however I do not fault the author of the article.

CNBC Stock Blog — 4 Stocks to Benefit From Health Care Reform ...

Sanders to introduce amendment stripping 'Cadillac' tax from ...

Tiger Woods and the thorny matter of racial identity

The first two articles one comes from a reputable news source, and the other from a political blog both were good examples of how real-time search can increase the speed in which we are informed.

In the third example this article was in the real-time feed because he mentions health care reform in the first few lines of the opening paragraph to help emphasis his point about Tiger Woods. The author may be trying use this as a keyword to drive traffic or he may not. I only found health care reform used only the one time in the article.

More Relevant Information

The speed in which relevant information, as was the information I found in my first two examples, as well as exposure to numerous new sources is what makes real-time search great. The increased speed of how information is delivered could lead to an increase of informed conversation about important issues.

Google's real-time search still has some bug's but overall provides a valuable resource to web surfers.