2009 has thus far been the year of innovation in regards to search engine marketing. The ever growing popularity of Twitter and its newly introduced Twitter Search has since opened the flood gates of what is now referred to as “Real-Time Search.” The demand for instant, relevant results has spawned a slew of real-time search engines such as Cuil, Wolfram Alpha, and the popular Bing. Google’s Larry Page has even said, “I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real-time search,” two of the newest real-time search engines, Collecta and Crowd Eye, have done just that. Essentially, the functionality of these two new real-time search engines beg the question, how and why are they different from traditional search engines?

Collecta

On June 18th 2009, the world was introduced to a no frills all results, first true real-time search engine, Collecta. Breaching the search engine market, Collecta draws information from blogs using wordpress; news services such as Fox, CNN, and Reuters; social networking sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Identica; and even images from Flickr as described on their homepage. The result of Collecta’s efforts is a simple user interface (UI) that displays real-time results on the left column and a preview on the right.

As described by TechCrunch, Collecta’s advantage over typical search engines rests in the use of a Web standard called Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Using XMPP over the traditional HTTP Web standard allows for data to travel from one individual to another substantially quicker, therefore allowing Collecta to render true real-time results to the public.

Attempting to use the service on launch day was less than thrilling. I proceeded to make several searches and (after waiting an average of six minutes for a result) my questions were yet to be answered. It seemed as though on launch date Collecta’s severs were not ready to handle the influx of users hungry for a taste of real-time results and they made it known via Twitter. Using the search engine a few days later, I have noticed an almost instant return for my search but I still have a few reservations.

First and foremost, the results are not organized. Rather than seeing results based on relevancy, I am only seeing the latest blurb in regards to my query. This tightens the vice on top companies to not only be the first to gain valuable information on a subject, but also be the first to Tweet or distribute it via a social media outlet and continue to post updates to ensure their presence on the results page. Secondly, finding answers to less popular questions is nearly impossible since the success of the query is measured by its current relevancy of the news. Collecta appears to be a great option for breaking news, sports, and current comments on products or brands as described by Collecta’s CEO Gerry Campbell. At this point, it is the initial impression of users that will determine if Collecta’s juice is worth the squeeze.

CrowdEye

Sharing Collecta’s June 18, 2009 launch date is CrowdEye, an alternative real-time search engine. Similar to Collecta, CrowdEye scours the Web for real-time information through Twitter and provides up to date results on the newest topics.

So what is so different about CrowdEye? First and foremost, after more carefully reviewing CrowdEyes FAQ, you will realize that “real-time” does not necessarily mean every Tweet as it happens. Instead, CrowdEye is only able to index “a large subset of tweets.” The disadvantage of this approach comes in form of not being able to produce second-by-second results as Collecta does.

Despite this small disadvantage, I find CrowdEye to be substantially more user friendly. CrowdEye divides results by Popular Links and Tweets allowing for natural search results to appear as well as real-time social media results. The page also includes a graph of Tweet volume over time; this allows the user to see the recent history of specific trends. Additionally, CrowdEye includes common words that you can click and create a filter in order to refine your search. Using CrowdEye for a broad range of searches answered my questions with relevant results using a nice mix of traditional and real-time search.

Summation

Constant developments by Facebook, Google, and other Web powerhouses ensures that the refinement of real-time search is far from over. In order to maximize the exposure a company must implement traditional search engine optimization, integrate social media tactics and now, with the introduction of real-time search, continually post relevant information within seconds of obtaining it.

It seems as though Collecta and CrowdEye have laid a solid foundation from which future search engines can learn, adapt, and tweak to bring us exactly what we want from our Web queries. As with everything Web related, the market for real-time search will continue to evolve and we as consumers, owners and contributors must continue to stay afloat.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 3:51 pm by Tony Yamanaka and is filed under Current News, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.