I heard people comment on all the Twitter & FriendFeed real-timeness, pointing out that Google is fast too. But maybe they are just crawling FF and Twitter to look real-time? - Ruud van Wijngaarden

Ruud: friendfeed items get ranked higher in Google. I've seen that happen a LOT. - Robert Scoble

I noticed the same thing on Mahalo Answers. In less then half an hour the question shows up in Googles search results. Google is just crawling really fast. - arjo

Google was really slow earlier today with the Jay Bennett/Wilco news. Couldn't find anything on Google, it was all over Twitter for hours before it showed in Google. - Karoli

Maybe the FF structure or API (and from Mahalo and the likes) makes it extremely easy to index for Google, so Google is actually preying on the smart systems of others to be sort-of-real-time? - Ruud van Wijngaarden

They've gotta do something :) - Mike van der Eerden

Well, THIS conversation isn't in Google...yet... - John E. Bredehoft

Actually this conversation is on Google already. If you search for "Wow, is Google going real time already?" it's there. - Charbax

Since Friendfeed provides a real-time API, why wouldn't Google basically store a searchable copy of all of Friendfeed on their index? - Charbax

Charbax: not to mention that friendfeed is more SEO friendly. The URLs here have keywords in them. I'd expect that from a team of Google superstars. - Robert Scoble

Do you really think Google's entire search engine can transform into real-time...I think it would take at least 3 years, if at all. Friendfeed engine is very friendly but substantially smaller, with only minor queries compared to the big ones. Google might improve its integration system but the path to a frienfeed real-time module looks much longer than expected. - Nir Ben Yona

I think the structure of Google, and all old skool search engines (searchword to your mother!), are not compatible with real time data gathering. Their bots would probably slow down the whole web if they were everywhere all the time. The nothing will be real-time anymore... - Ruud van Wijngaarden

A screen shot of Google - http://ff.im/3dYwy - Brent - Long Live Rock

Rather than thinking "the burden is on Google to spider the web in real-time" think "clever sites with active communities can help Google give the appearance of real-time web search." I don't think people blog in real-time, but they do in the aggregate, and some sites do better than others in helping out the "spiders." - Richard ¿digame? Walker

Strangely, Robert's search link doesnt have a single entry from Twitter...atleast in first 3 pages i checked. - Roshan Ramachandran

Roshan, look at first link in the screen shot I captured right above - It shows a twitter reference ... Its a direct link to his twitter page ... - Brent - Long Live Rock

It makes sense since this item originated over on Twitter. - Robert Scoble

The other one is mostly showing friendfeed, because that conversation started on friendfeed. Interesting how Google works. - Robert Scoble

I just posted a shot with the omitted searches brought back in - very interesting ... http://ff.im/3dZRz - Brent - Long Live Rock

http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/activit... - this is getting a little weird. Here there is a link to yoiur twitter page which is alright, but then all the friend feed chat is below your Link ... WTF? and it is in real time ... Ok apparently this guy is taking a major chunk of FF Feed and posting it on his blog in real time. I'm not sure, but it sure seems like plagerisim to me ... - Brent - Long Live Rock

I agree with Ruud, Google indexing social media sites (as well as links) is an effective way to appear real-time, as they are already where most of the action happens anyway. Some sites are always more likely to contain current content while others are a waste of resources to crawl more than once a month. - Alistair (alpinefolk)

Try anything - A blog, Flickr, Google is on it - Brent - Long Live Rock

I imagine google could also identify frequently updated sites by making notes about how often each site is updated, each time the bot passes through. Then send the bots to rapidly index sites with a high real-time score. It could be a self-adjusting process that would ensure no resources are wasted rapidly scanning static sites. - Raj Advani

exactly Raj, it's a constantly self-adjusting algorithm that can distinguish sites that are "static" or "dynamic" or "should be dynamic but aren't at the moment" (i.e. tube blockage) - and also perhaps predict spikes and schedule the site's time slot for the best spidering payoff. - Richard ¿digame? Walker

Adding the Greasemonkey script "Twitter Search Results on Google" combined w/ an advanced Google search makes good comparison - Mike Elliott

I think this is funny/cool - I don't normally see my stuff show up for a while but to have it show up as quick as it did is interesting. That was a fun conversation last night - I love Web 2.0 - Robert Freeze

Yeah! It seems like they've tweaked their servers to hunt after these realtime mirco-blogging sites.. Even, Tweets are showing up early like never before. :) - Mohammad Abdurraafay

Hey Robert, yes it seems so. Great progress - Gianluigi Cuccureddu

It hasn't come up in the discussion yet, so I'll mention ... is it possible that many of you are getting unrepresentative results, if you have recently visited a site, and you then Use Google to search for keywords or phrases. Google may be returning results to YOU, individually, more quickly, by using your recent browser history to return customized Search Results based on sites recently visited. - Gary Etie

... Also ... I get Google Alerts, via Gmail, 10 minutes after posting to my blog, if the post contains Google Alert search terms that I monitor. Getting a Google Alert, 10 minutes after a self-hosted, WordPress Blog Post brings other factors into the "real time search" discussion, like the affect of "Notifications" that go out to Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc., via WordPress Plug-Ins, as soon as an item is posted. Wouldn't smart sites like friendfeed employ as similar notification tool, to get their content indexed as soon as possible. - Gary Etie

Gary: Google treats everything as equal. It's highly unlikely that they are customising search results well not yet anyway - this will affect their algorithims. I think Google are just weighting the content on FriendFeed / Twitter more important by indexing the /everyone feed every five minutes or so instead of daily etc (which can be set by a webmaster via webmaster tools and a sitemap.xml ;)) - Nicholas James

Really? Google doesn't customize Search Results to the individual user, based on browsing history? - Gary Etie

Search Wiki is be customized (although the user is editting the results themselves) other then that users are treated the same. - Nicholas James

Its not just searchwiki that's customized and adding &pws=0 does not come close to removing all customization. - Ryan Underdown from fftogo

I posted an entry on my blog ( http://austincitypermits.com/blog... ) with the words "Current Google Gap in Real Time Search" in the title. Time stamp - May 26, 2009 @ 21:40. I'm going to Search Google periodically, to see how quickly it gets indexed, and post the timestamp of the Google Alert I receive. - Gary Etie

Can you tell me why "real-time" search is good? - Jason Nunnelley

I believe it's good for everyone in case you happen to be looking for the information. It's good for Google because if they can't do real time then the twitter search and everyone elses search that does will dominate more and more. - James Stratford

Googles plan of Real Time Search at the moment is linking to the conversation...we'll see this shift eventually. - Nicholas James

Jason read: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive... - Nicholas James

Time stamp - blog post - May 26, 2009 @ 21:40 .... Time stamp - Google Alert - "austin city permits" - Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:52 PM - That took 12 minutes. - Gary Etie

A normal Google Search already has the post at #1 position, due to exact wording. It took me 30 minutes to get back and do a search, and it was already up at 22:10 PM CST ... http://www.google.com/search... - Gary Etie

Robert - I've done a few blog posts on this. I call it 'hyper-indexing' ... and they've been doing it on select blogs for over a year (A lot of blogs ....) - Charlie Anzman

Charlie - That's precisely what I'm attempting to point out. My blog is not select, by any means, and I get a Google Alert within 10 - 12 minutes after a post, and the post shows up in Google Search results within 30 minutes. - Gary Etie

equal is not good ,but snap internet in 1s is cool - qian

Yes I have noticed this too in the last few days - Nova Spivack

so that explains why I got so many vanity google alerts today. - Peggy Dolane