Over my first cup of coffee this morning I read a couple of articles about Google rolling out its new search feature that adds almost instant results from Twitter, Facebook, Google News and other resources to your search results.
My first thought was oh no now people will see a bunch of crap but I soon realized the results are not part of normal search and that the user must choose to view Real-Time results. I have not seen any figures on how many people click on the specialized search options within Google or any other search engine and for that reason I can’t say how this may or may not disrupt the carefully crafted optimization of websites using SEO to place their sites higher up on search engine result pages (SERP). I do however think at this moment business users and nonprofits need not panic, for companies actively involved in SEO/SEM this may be something to add to your tool box and viewed as an additional opportunity to be seen.
Some people see Twitter and social media as a Siren Call actively seducing your business into the cliffs and causing certain destruction, I don’t share this view. Twitter and other media properties are more like a huge crowd on the beach waving to you as you sail by, there really is no seduction going on just a huge roar with lots of flailing arms trying to get your attention. If you or your SEO firm use their handy spy glass you can find the gems amongst the teaming crowd, you can part the din to find what offers you the most value and helps bring success to your business or nonprofit.
Try tweeting during business and dinner hours for both the East and West Coast in the US and similar times in other regions of the globe. If search engines are really tuning into Real-Time tweets and its ilk then this is where you stand to get your best return for effort. Try blogging in the US. between 9:00 and 10:00 AM East Coast time and then tweet and tweet again at 12:15 PM to catch the East Coast lunch crowd, follow upon that will tweets at 4:00 and 6:00 PM Eastern and then monitor traffic and mentions for a week remembering to monitor Latest Results in Google
UPDATE: Ok I jumped the fence on some of my remarks above. today I see a real time window for Latest Results in the middle of the SERP’s, and it appears that the more popular the event or news the faster the small window scrolls. People not interested in these type of results will quickly learn to skip them and keep their attention on the search task at hand. The new results will distract people who want to be distracted.
