Google is looking to put a Twitter like jolt into its
search engine results trying to incorporate as much real time search as possible.
Google Tuesday took the wraps off its Caffeine search updates, setting off a fury of speculation that the search engine giant was responding to Microsoft's Bing decision engine. Google, for its part, denied that was the case.
The new infrastructure for Google search mostly sits "under the hood" of the existing template making the updates mostly unnoticeable for the majority of users. However, one of the most interesting developments Google brings with Caffeine is the further inclusion of Twitter pages.
It is no secret that Google and Twitter, the microblogging service, had discussion about a potential acquisition, with Twitter ultimately stepping away from the deal. At the time it was speculated that Google wanted to take advantage of Twitter's ability to conduct real time search.
Although the acquisition of the microblogging service didn't take place, Google, with the inclusion of more Twitter-oriented search results, is still looking for that real time component in search. The move to include those pages is admirable, but must still be somewhat frustrating for Google because the pages have to be crawled before they can appear.
Essentially, that means that the results coming from Caffeine are still somewhat dated in the sense that they are not as fresh as the discussion on Twitter.
Still, it is unlikely that Google will stop pursuing up-to-the-second search results. While no one wants to say it, real time search results have become the golden ring. Facebook just acquired FriendFeed in an attempt to incorporate search elements into its service. And while Bing positions itself as a decision engine, Microsoft is undoubtedly watching this space very carefully.
After all, if Twitter can out-Google Google who's to say that Microsoft and others can't do the same.
