'Search'ing Data -Relevant & Fresh

The value of real time information on the web has increased

manifold especially after the arrival of Twitter. And search engines like

Google, Yahoo!, etc have been trying to reduce the gap between fresh indexing of

the web from months to mere minutes. Today, you can get search results that are

just seconds old - including blogs, headlines, tweets and feeds from Facebook.

Real time search



Both Bing and Google now support Twitter search results. Whenever you enter

a popular search term in Google search engine, your result page will include a

section called ' Latest results for' that features a constantly updating window

of real time results. “Latest results for' usually show up about half way down

the first results page. Earlier people used to visit a page, click a link that

seemed relevant and visit another page. Now they spend a lot of time monitoring

streams of data including tweets, status updates, etc from services like Twitter

and Facebook and blogs.

Now search engines feature tweets and updates on the result

page based on their gravity. A Twitter user who attracts many followers, and

whose tweets are often 'retweeted' by other users, can generally be assumed to

have more authority. Similarly, Facebook users gain authority as their friends

multiply, particularly if those friends also have many friends.

You can zoom to any point in time and 'replay' what people

were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter. To try this out, simply click

'Show options' on the left hand side of the search results page and then select

'Updates.' The first page will show you the familiar latest and short-form

updates from a set of sources including Twitter. Also there is a new chart at

the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any

point to view the tweets from that specific time period. Here we've searched for

'Fifa world cup 2010' and browsed to see July 8, 2010.

The latest from Yahoo! on real time data is the enhanced

Search Assist. The enhancement provide near real-time suggestions as you type

your query. You probably already use this tool to conduct your searches quickly,

but now you can get even fresher suggestions, which will be useful when there

are recent top news or events related to your search topic. To check this tool,

I typed 'Germany vs.' and it showed me the name of the team it would play

against on that day. By clicking on the first suggestion, I was able to see the

details of the match right in the search result page.

With real time data in search results, visitors spend more time monitoring tweets, headlines, etc. in the results page only. Here, search results in the box show live tweets.

The chart shows the relative volume of activity on Twitter about a topic. The new 'Updates' mode enables you to explore any topic that people have discussed in Twitter.

Encrypted search



The web security system that protects banking sites, e-commerce portals, etc

now comes to search. The search giant Google now offers a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-based

Web search that helps prevent search terms and results pages from being snooped.

Google users can now run encrypted searches simply by navigating to https://www.google.com.

This private search function is currently in Beta. It is designed to prevent

eavesdroppers from analyzing the URL or content to see the search terms you are

sending to Google, or the results. This encryption makes it difficult for anyone

in between your computer and Google's servers to see what search terms you use

or what results Google gives back. it only works with traditional search

results, Google Maps or Google Image search is not yet supported. So switching

to those results may take you out of your encrypted connection.

'News' more customizable, shareable



Both Google and Bing have revamped their news section with several changes

to make news more relevant and customizable. Among the new elements that Google

has introduced are 'News for you', List View & Section View, Source Preferences,

Topics, Sharing, Rollover for more sources, Weather & Local News, Keyboard

Shortcuts, etc. The home page offers something called 'News for you', a stream

of headlines automatically fetched to your interests. Also, you can personalize

the page by clicking on 'Edit this page' to specify how much you're interested

in Business, Health, etc. Read more about these features here:

http://bit.ly/d24BCW

Recognized by a web address starting with 'https' or a browser lock icon, Secure SSL technology is regularly used by online banking and e-commerce websites..

'News' service of both Bing and Google are revamped with several new elements. This include Topic Sharing, Local News. The layout and design of the duo has also been refurbished.

The Live Search News (http://www. bing.com /news) from

Microsoft's Live Search team is a direct competitor to Google News. Live Search

News looks like a simplified version of Google News. The layout and design are

aesthetically pleasing. One nice feature is the local-news sidebar on the right.

This section feeds you news from the locality that you're in.  Live Search News

also lets you refine news results based on categories that are relevant to the

story you're viewing. To access this functionality, just click "More on this

story" for any article and you'll see relevant stories, along with these

filters.

Apart from all these, there are other enhancements from

Google. One of these includes 'Similar' pages on the results page. This is a way

to find new websites similar to ones you already like, but that hasn't been too

visible. A small block called 'Pages similar to' at the bottom of the results

page takes you you to the full list of similar pages. Also introduced by Google

is a redesigned Google Image Search for mobile, based on iPhone 3.0+ and Android

2.1 devices, that makes it easier for you to see as many images as possible when

searching on your mobile phone.