Technology news websites are currently saturated with talk of Google’s latest releases, which range from a real-time search innovation to something called “Google Goggles”. According to cnn.com, Google has actually introduced 33 different search innovations in the past 67 days.
Most of these releases have been met with the usual mix of excitement and scepticism, so it’s not always easy to decode exactly what effect they might have. Over the next few days, propertyadguru.com will take a preliminary look at a few of Google’s new offerings and ponder what they could mean for the world of online advertising.
Real-Time Search: The Quick and the Dead?
On Monday, Google announced its new real-time search option, which involves adding a continuously updated “latest results” box to the main search results page. Google explains it like this:
“Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.”
The video below shows these real-time results in action:
For those working in real estate, this innovation could be both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, real-time results could be another way to attract buyers and sellers, providing your latest status update or website addition promotes you as a go-to agent for your area. Real-time results could also be another way to find up-to-the-minute leads, which the NAR’s recent survey has shown can be an important factor in gaining clients.
At the same time, an aggregated source of real-time results has the potential to cut agents out of the picture. As agentgenius.com’s Lani Rosales wrote last month when Google was testing out its Social Search option, “What can be scary about all of this is the prospect of buyers and sellers connecting organically”.
As some pointed out at the time, buyers and sellers already have plenty of opportunities to connect with each other online, even without Google’s Social Search. But Google’s real-time search, highlighted as it is at the top of the results page, may make this even more likely.
Of course, it’s still very early to be speculating on how real-time search might change things for real estate professionals, but propertyadguru.com will be monitoring its effects with interest. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts in our comments.
Tune in next time for a look at Google’s new personalised search, announced last Friday, which will reportedly affect even those without Google accounts.
Related posts:
- Google’s Latest Releases Part 2: Personalised Results
- Google’s Latest Releases Part 3: New Maps Perspective
- Is Google Personalized Search A Threat To Property Sites
- More Real Estate Upgrades from Google Maps
- Google in 2010: What Changed, What Didn’t
- Google Maps Highlights Real Estate
- Google’s Real Estate Search Bites the Dust
- Google Instant: What Does It Mean for Marketers?
- Using Google Keywords for More Traffic
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