Google's Real-time Search Surfaces Tweets, Blogs, and Soon Facebook Updates

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- Do a Google search for your favorite (embattled) celebrity or hot news story and the results will likely include Web sites, articles, recent blog posts, and FriendFeed and Twitter updates.

The search giant recently rolled out what it calls "real-time search" to deliver the most up-to-the-second Web content on a search topic, and Google product manager Dylan Casey explained how it worked when I traveled to the company's headquarters last week.

"Real-time search is about content that's being published right now, so if you enter a query and it's something being talked about right now, we'll surface that," Casey explained. "It's a whole new source of information reaching the Web."

Google is pulling content for real-time search from Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku, and Identi.ca and will be adding Facebook and MySpace updates in the coming weeks. Many users have expressed concern about whether that means all their Facebook updates are now searchable. But there are ways to change your Facebook settings to protect your content.

With real-time search, Google users can also filter search results now by updates, blog posts, latest news, and other types of content, Casey said.

Daisy Whitney, Senior Producer