Winning the Real-Time Search Game

The point of the previous section is to make your company a part of people’s social dialogue. As we start looking to search engines and social networks for recommendations on everything from nail salons to African safaris, you want your company to be on the tip of people’s tongues—especially tastemakers, whose opinions are seen by many. If you build an active community of supporters, your company will be positioned to thrive when status updates are regularly returned as search results or social recommendations.

Google began experimenting with adding real-time results into the regular search results during its partnership with Twitter. Google+ status updates are next. Before long, real-time search will be a seamless part of social search rather than a separate entity.