Google upgrades search with realtime and mobile features
By
Kshitij Sobti |
Updated on 08-Dec-2009
It was bound to happen, but is quite exciting nonetheless. Google Search has now added support for realtime search results.
Now when you search for any topic you will see a section of search which is constantly being updated with new results. The realtime search section shows results from realtime sources such as blogs, news, Twitter and FriendFeed. They have also revealed their partnership with Facebook, MySpace, Jaiku, and Identi.ca other than FriendFeed and Twitter for realtime search.
So searching for a trending topic such as “GM” is sure to give you a feed of people mentioning it in Twitter or on their blogs. By showing only the latest search results you get a full page with just a stream of realtime updates.
Check out a video by Google about their new realtime search features:
With this they are also graduating Google Trends from Labs after adding a new “Hot Topics” feature which shows some of the trending topics on Google search.
For mobile devices Google is redefining the way searches are conducted by utilizing some more of the data available with such devices. On mobiles besides just a text query, a lot more data can be utilized to get a more context sensitive and accurate search result.
On mobile devices Google Search can now conduct voice search in Japanese. Google maps has also added a feature which can take into account your location and perform a search of “what’s nearby”.
One of the most exciting new search features would have to be Google Goggles, a new feature for mobiles which will let you search using images instead of text. With Google Goggles, you merely point your camera to the object in question, whether it be a book, a monument, an artwork, a logo etc and Google will look it up for you. With this new feature you can simply point your camera at a landmark and click a picture and find out its name, and other search results.
Google can also keep a “visual search history” much like the web history feature right now, which will let you see what all images you have search with before.
Check out a video by Google of how it works: