"Real-time Search 101" as presented by Rob Garner (@robgarner), Strategy Director, iCrossing, at the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) in Toronto, Canada on Thursday, April 8, 2010.

1. Real-time Search 101
Rob Garner SMX Toronto
Strategy Director April 2010
iCrossing

2. What‟s the big deal about real-time?
• It‟s an entirely different animal in the search world
– It‟s about both search, and discovery
– Just like image search, local search, news search, etc., real-time
search is an important segment of web search
• To be successful, real-time needs these two unique
aspects
1) It must have a crawler-based algorithm
2) It must have a human-driven social layer
Trust and authority are also paramount to its success
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3. There is more to real-time than just Tweets
• Consider the following elements of “in-the-moment” content:
– Forums
– Blog posts
– Comments on blogs
– Webpages
– Feeds
– Microformatted data
Real-Time Search Is Much Bigger Than Just Twitter , Search Insider
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=113613
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4. Twitter can‟t be beat in real-time streams, for news
“as-it-happens”
• More content and news
focused
• Highly relevant to PR and
brand monitoring
stakeholders
• News travels within seconds
of occurrence in many
cases
– Ex. Michael Jackson Death
– Earthquakes and other natural
disasters
– Localized emergencies and
crimes (building on fire)
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5. But nobody beats Google at any other level of recency
• Combines both search
and social
• Robust crawl surfaces
both web chatter and
web assets within
seconds and minutes of
occurrence
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6. The new „R‟ word in search: Recency
Recency in Real-Time Search: It's Much Broader Than Just 'Right Now' , Search Insider
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=114558
Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential 6

7. Recency impacts a major segment of all search queries
• OneRiot study claims that up to 40% of all queries
have some sort of real-time intent. This includes:
– Entertainment
– News and politics
– Current events
– Etc.
• OneRiot only allows content publishers to advertise
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Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential

8. The spectrum of recency and historical search
1) Old way
Search through history of all documents
2) New way
Search history of last year last month right now
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9. Some keywords are better suited either to real-
time or shorter time frames, than historical search
• “Hotel deals”
• “Things to do tomorrow in Manhattan….”
• “Cowboys vs. Packers TV channel”
• “Coupons”
• Auction-related
• Keywords with seasonality
• Etc.

10. But can real-time predict…the future?
“The future, Source: Flickr
Conan?”
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11. Examples of search recency

12. Ex. Search over “all time”
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13. Ex. Search for current information, last 30
days – “hotel coupon”
Search for “hotel coupon”: Each result yielded a current and valid coupon
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14. Ex. Search over the last few days
“SXSW” “SMX Munich”
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15. Ex. Search Right Now
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16. Social Relevancy: How engines are looking at Twitter
Consider the parallel aspects of websites, and Twitter accounts
• Domain authority : username authority
• Duplicate content : re-tweeplicate content
• Blogging freshness : content freshness : microblogging freshness
• Links : number of followers
• Quality of links : Quality of followers
• Inbound links vs. outbound links : ratio of followers in contrast to the number of
people followed
• Linking to bad : good neighborhoods
• Themes of Twitter users
A Big Week For Real-Time And Social Search, Search Insider
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=116320
What An Algorithmic Approach To Twitter's Social-Search Layer Might Look Like, Search Insider
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=109358
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17. Real-time keyword planning: Google Trends
• Seasonality of many keyword topics is highly predictable, and
marketers can capitalize on spikes in search and social interest
by planning ahead
http://www.google.com/trends
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18. Real-time keyword planning: Google Hot Trends
• Content publishers who have the ability to write and publish
fluidly can jump into the search and social mix by observing
rapidly trending topics in Google Hot trends (and also Twitter,
and OneRiot)
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
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19. More examples of real-time search

20. One Riot
• Aggregates citations from
multiple social sources,
including Twitter
• Propagates URLs based on
social popularity from
trusted social nodes
• Offers paid advertising to
content providers only
http://www.oneriot.com
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21. Bing‟s Twitter Engine
• A mix of tweets, and
popularly tweeted URLs
• Arguably has more of a
social approach to real-time
than Google
http://www.bing.com/twitter
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22. Wowd
• Shows most popular pages that
users are viewing “right now”,
and over history
• Rich SERP allows rankings to
move up and down the page in
front of your eyes
• View popular pages, or watch
real-time results at the keyword
level
• Results created socially by its
users who are sharing their real-
time viewing habits in a cloud
http://www.wowd.com
Wowd: A Real-Time Search Engine That Will Make You Go 'Wow'
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115444
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23. Google‟s “Latest”
• Currently no ads on “latest” real
time results
• Ads kick in with a recency of 24
hours or later
• Universal results kick in with a
recency of 24 hours or greater
• Can be sorted by either
relevance, or by date
• They have experimented with
forum content
• Filter by “all,” videos, updates,
news, blogs, books, and
discussion (forums and other
sites)
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24. Google‟s “Latest” - More
• Streams as results become
available, as fast as the query
is popular
• De-duplicates tweets
• Relies on web crawl and spam
filtering
• Some spam still does get by
• Not as robust as Twitter for
breaking events, but
dominates in every other
aspect
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25. Google Forum “Discussions” search
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26. Google Alerts
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27. Twitter Search
• Results shown only in
reverse-chronological order
• Does not de-duplicate tweets
• Spam is often a problem for
popular queries
• Does not store history over
two weeks
• One of the best ways on the
web to track and gauge real-
time events
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28. Twitter Real-time discovery stream
• One of the best (if not *the*
best) sources for real-time
discovery
• Your Twitter stream is only as
good as the quality of people
and sources you follow
• Does not allow for back
searches of tweets in your
stream
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29. THANK YOU
SMX Toronto
April 2010
Rob Garner
Strategy Director
iCrossing.com
Rob.Garner@icrossing.com
214.676.2089
@robgarner
www.facebook.com/garner
GreatFinds.iCrossing.com
Linkedin.com/in/robgarner
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