December 10, 2009 by Matt Thomas
Debate surrounding this one has been raging over at the Top Click Media offices for quite some time now. Some of us think it’s one of the most exciting developments to the ranking algorithm for quite some time, whilst others of us question the relevance of seeing things posted to the internet in order of how recently they were posted rather than relevance.
I personally fall into the former category, though I’ll try and sum up both sides’ points fairly…
Pros
Okay, we’ll start with the useful stuff. When you’re looking for stuff that’s just happened, information being recent is by far the most important thing.
Let’s use Michael Jackson as an example. In the hours after the story of the singers death was broken on TMZ Google was flooded with queries pertaining to the singer. For these searchers, almost all of whom were trying verify then rumour, aside from any news results, the first page would have been pretty much useless as it would only be bringing up official sites, places to buy tickets for the O2 shows, etc. even the news results would have been out of date. A real time news ticker would have serviced those searchers needs exactly.
I know that’s an extreme example, but the principle stands up for all current affairs searches, and even for other types of searches. Basically it comes down to the fact that real-time search provides another perspective that could well be useful. Maybe even providing you with something you didn’t think of originally.
Cons
Right, now the case for the prosecution. Basically the point made by the naysayers is this, being the first or latest to comment on something does not make you right, nor does it make your opinion any more valid. In fact, often it’s quite the opposite, to grant these people what’s often effectively position one on Google, however briefly seem s a little bit counter-intuitive.
Also, it may be open to abuse. I’ve no doubt there’s unscrupulous black-hat types out there as I type figuring out ways to automate their twitter posts etc., to keep showing up. Google will undoubtedly have thought about this, though it’ll still be interesting to see how spammy it ends up getting.
The other criticism is that it increases Google’s dominion over the first page of results. This is a common gripe from SEO consultants, that it makes it tougher for them to get decent rankings if more and more spaces are taken up by Google Base, Google Images, Real Time Search, etc. This is valid in some respects though if the information Google provides is relevant then I really don’t see the harm. After all, the SERPS are always there if you don’t find what you need from Google’s offerings.
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