Real Time Search is still a bit like the young debutant that has been brought to her first ball but isn’t quite sure how or when she will fit in.

What is Real Time Search? It primarily refers to search results from Social Media Platforms integrated alongside or in Google, Bing or Yahoo’s  “regular” search results. It’s a fast way to get content indexed by search engines, but typically is only going to show up for a few minutes - valuable but perishable.

Real Time Search is a valuable tool in any company’s marketing mix and something you should be paying attention to and be thinking about as you drop in to technology’s next search wave. Here’s our short take on leveraging Real Time Search.

Maintain Social Media Presence

You want to maintain a strong presence on Social Media Platforms including all the majors such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Jaiku to drive Real Time Search results. Use common sense by posting positive items about your brand, company, products and/or news and cross promote via PR when where feasible, with keywords that will drive visibility via major search engines.  This is “digital heavy lifting” - use someone who knows their way around a social media platform and community.

Heavyweights & New Players

The big three (Google, Bing and Yahoo) are now integrating Real Time Search into their search results but there’s also a crop of up and coming specialized real time search engines that are adding value to the process including two of our favs Scoopler and One Riot.

One Riot has an API and Toolbar, is already aggressively licensing it’s technology out to others and appears to be leading the pack in Real Time Search functionality, although their results can be a little fuzzy at times. Algorithm hiccups perhaps or Google jitters…..

Be a Real Time Search Voyeur

You want to monitor what’s being said online about you in the real time search ecosystem - it’s not always easy, but you can learn a lot of good and bad about your brand, products, services, etc.  Try Keyword searches in most cases, but if looking for a specific topic on Twitter HashTags may help you to cut through some of the chatter.

Use basic fundamental result accounts like Google Alerts, Yahoo Keyword News Alert and set up Twitter Alerts using your platform of choice (or Twitter’s own Search Engine) to keep your fingers on the digital pulse.

Social Media Monitoring Platforms

There is a whole crop of much more robust Social Media Monitoring Tools and Engagement Platforms. Radian6 is probably one of the market leaders - we like their robust functionality and interface. But, their services are not inexpensive and therefore should only be used by those who are serious about monitoring and leveraging real time search.

Morever and Custom Scoop are two other firms in the social media monitoring biz.  Custom Scoop has more of a focus on news monitoring while Morever is much more of a serious competitor to a Radian6 and appears to have a very sophisticated high end system.

So, a quick take on the evolving world of Real Time Search - the only certainty is it will continue to evolve on par with the warp-speed, to use a now ancient digital phrase from galaxies far away, on par with Social Media Processes, Platforms and Technologies. Search for us under Twitter/LinkedMedia.