Google adds Facebook to real-time search | Marketing/Ecommerce Research

"Google recently announced it is now incorporating Facebook Pages status updates in its real-time search feature.

The announcement wasn’t exactly detailed - it consisted of a brief message on Twitter (go figure), so not much is known about the ins and outs of the arrangement at this stage.

Google’s real-time search feature is something I have never really taken much notice of. It consists of a scrolling box updating in real time that appears in the first search engine results page (SERP), usually in relation to breaking news or very popular topics.

For example, if you were to run the following search query at the moment: Winter Olympics - you will likely see the real time results section embedded somewhere on the first page of results.

Real-time search draws from all sorts of sources - newspapers, blogs, Twitter and even MySpace. From what I can gather, the Facebook inclusion will be limited to Facebook Pages - profiles set up by businesses and organizations, or individuals such as politicians. These pages are a little different to general Facebook user profile pages."