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Gaddafi Shows Why Google is Failing Its Mission in Search

Don't expect Twitter-based realtime search anytime soon

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By · October 20, 2011 · 57 Comments
Gaddafi Shows Why Google is Failing Its Mission in Search

As you may recall, Google used to have a realtime search feature. When some topic was hot at any given time, and you did just a plain Google search on that topic, Google would show realtime results mixed right in with the regular results, and you can actually see them rolling in in realtime. It was quite useful in many cases, particularly in breaking news situations. Even when it didn’t automatically show up in the search results it was available as an option from the left panel. It was always a useful tool to see what people were saying about anything during the moment.

Do you miss Google’s realtime search feature? Let us know in the comments. Find this topic interesting? Why not share this article on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+?

The absence of realtime search is glaringly evident on a day like today. This morning, everyone was scrambling to find out the latest on Muammar Gaddafi. As of the time of this writing, the best Google could do on search results, in terms of timeliness, was a news story from about a half hour ago. That may or may not be the best result, but it doesn’t help me for finding the very latest, especially in a situation like this where people are frequently tweeting from Tripoli.

No, in this case, Google is no doubt driving a lot of people to Twitter Search, simply because they’re not meeting the demand. It seems like a fundamental problem for Google when it is not meeting a search-related demand, given that Google is at its core, still a search company. It’s mission is “to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Well, realtime information is generally useful when it is accessible in real time.

All Twitter is reporting that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo indicated we should not expect Twitter and Google to come to an agreement to renew their deal any time soon.

That said, Google has indicated in the past that it would bring realtime search back, using data from other sources, including Google+. It had other sources before, but it was clear that Twitter dominated the results. This point was made even clearer when they just removed the feature entirely after losing Twitter data. Apparently, it just wasn’t even good enough to offer without Twitter.

So now, they want Google+ updates to replace it. I’m not so sure if there’s enough material there, however. Larry Page announced during the company’s earnings call last week that Google+ surpassed 40 million members, but how many of them are posting public updates as often as Twitter users tweet? One key obstacle here is that Google+ was designed to offer users the maximum amount of control when sharing updates. This Circles method of sharing practically encourages people not to share data publicly, so that’s less data for the realtime search engines, although I could see Google including results from people in your Circles that were shared with you. But I don’t know if that’s enough to make a huge difference.

One thing, in terms of data from other sources, that could work to Google’s advantage, is the subscribe feature recently launched by Facebook. Facebook users can now let people subscribe to their profiles without having to actually be friends with them. This no doubt encouraged a lot of people to share more stuff publicly, knowing that people might want to subscribe to their posts, as if they were following them on Twitter. Again, though, I don’t know if there is enough here to make a huge difference, because Facebook and Twitter are just different in the way most people share info.

Twitter is public by default. It’s just a better source of public realtime data that is unrivaled at this point. That’s just how it is. Without Twitter, Google’s realtime search will never be as good as it could be with it. Unless people stop using Twitter, and it doesn’t look like that will be happening anytime soon.

Just how important is realtime search? Well, that depends on the user, but as I said, this whole Gaddafi thing is a prime example of when its absence is incredibly obvious. On the anniversary of 9/11, Danny Sullivan reminded us of how awful it was trying to find the latest info about the attacks when they happened. Imagine how much easier that would have been in the realtime search era.

Realtime search is clearly important enough for other companies to continue to try and improve upon it. Just in the last week or two, we’ve seen new offerings from Bitly, Topsy, and even Google+ itself.

While each of these options may have be useful, and can probably co-exist with one another, I think most people that think about searching for what’s happening right now, think about Twitter. In fact, if you go to Twitter’s search page, it actually says, “See what’s happening right now.”

Without the ability to search “what’s happening right now,” Google has at least one weakness in search, and is simply not a complete search engine.

What do you think? Does Google need to get Twitter data back for realtime search? How important is realtime search to you? Let us know in the comments.

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There are 57 Comments. Add Yours.
  1. Sean
    Reply

    Much agreed. Found this article after trying to use the realtime feature, which apparently is no more.

  2. Jenny
    Reply

    I agree with you Chris, Google does not want to promote Twitter bc they hope to kill it and G+ will never catch up.

    Who’s that slick person int he video? Looks like one of those magician scamsters

    • That would be Google’s Vic Gundotra.

  3. I like to swap to Yahoo for this very reason. They have a constant stream of updated news info, right at the top of the page.

    C’mon Google.

    • I’m not seeing any better results at Yahoo. I see no realtime results in a Yahoo.com search.

  4. I would not put blame on Google at all, for the specific reasons that Ghadafi’s death may, in fact be a deception. Why not think “outside of the box”, and await for the confirmation of his death, in which Google will most definitely post, once his death is confirmed. Until our own men that protect this country, confirm his death, then I would not worry about Google.

    • Gaddafi is jut an example, the same argument applies to anything else in the news. It’s not about fact checking. It’s about getting the latest in what people are saying.

    • moonlight
      Reply

      Gadhaffi is D E A D. Saw pictures and videos of it on the internet and our own local news actually showed his DEAD face up close and personal. The image was horrifying, but a deception it is NOT!

  5. I actually use Bing.

    • I’m not seeing any better results there, unless I go specifically to Bing social search. They should integrate it into the regular results.

  6. There used to be a search engine company called leapfish that tried to offer real time search. What they were actually doing was using twitter. I found it really useful when trying to keep score during a pay per view event that I did not pay for. The results would be posted within minutes.

  7. I personally don’t care about what is happening write now on twitter and all that jazz. The internet doesn’t need more spam content and that is what you get with Twitter and “social search”. Do you really want to get your news from a 13 year old kid who is making a post about something to get traffic or a follow? Most people don’t, but then again that is what you are asking for.

    As far as news results… Google has it as the beginning of every search I type. Having the automatic update rolling was a feature that was overly spammed by spam sites. They constantly created pages and topics on “the in thing” and then got their little 1 second of glory clicks from google then made another one. I never found it useful nor did I ever find any quality search results from it. The In The News at least gives me a site where if there content is wrong I can at least hold someone responsible for it.

    I’ve tried using bing search, but after dozens of horrific results I gave up on it and went back to google. Bing claims to be a decision engine, yet the decision it makes is to give you search overload just like every other search engine, they just don’t do nearly as good of a job of it.

  8. Pete Schliebner
    Reply

    If real-time search results means most of the results will come from Twitter, then I say good riddance. There simply is no accountability for anything anyone posts on Twitter. Therefore most of the results will be rumors, nonsense, personal opinions, and more nonsense. Enough of the instant gratification, fast-food attitude already. Twitter is for twits. Real business people with real businesses don’t need it, don’t use it, and recognize that it is mostly ego driven drivel.

  9. geoio
    Reply

    I don’t think Google has to offer this function. If you are looking for real-time search, go somewhere else.

  10. Unfortunately, Google is no longer the useful Google of yesterday. Google is now focusing on local results in an effort to replace yellow page sites. Even Google can’t do everything and by diverting attention to local search, the rest of their site is suffering.

    I’ve written several comments for a long time since they first started focusing on local search. I think it is a big mistake and is essentially a brand change. It certainly is a mistake with regards to myself because I no longer find Google as useful as I used to. When I use Google, I am researching something and I am not interested in finding local businesses. If I wanted to do that, I would use a yellow page site.

  11. I SO agree with your assessment of Google real time search. Google is a disappointment in this area, sad to say. Google search falls shour in other ways that I won’t go into here. Let’s just say, if I want to find out more about Guatemala, when it comes up in BizRate or Target search results as “Buy your Guatemala here!” or “Get the best deal on Guatemala today!” it makes me groan in pain. While their new algorithm is an improvement, it still has a loooong way to go…

    Yes, I miss real time Google search results…

  12. Greg
    Reply

    Real time searches across all domains would require a staggering amount of computing power and for what? To be able to find the latest posting of a cities minutes? The way yahoo kept posting clinton getting off a plane (no news … just a feed) maybe there is the demand .. right up there with reality TV where you can waste hours watching someone else’s life.
    Though I understand the appeal most real time systems have some method of determining priority and it is bad enough that online book stores determine what you can read based on sales versus content.
    Twitter provides the real time and specialty sites certainly can pick up the slack. Does google have to do everything .. I wouldn’t want it to and if I was looking at their budget I can’t see the cost justification.
    Sorry but since most of the searches repeat tons of crap due to all sorts of useless services trying to get hits I would rather have google find away to remove content from searching before wasting time on pleasing someones lust to see death, destruction and misery in real time.
    If the US news agencies ever go back to actually being news agencies versus entertainment organizations maybe you would simply be able to go to them.
    Another way to look at it is this – imagine the amount of people you could help in the war torn countries you just wanted to google a story about by giving up real time and having the money saved go to clean water, job creation etc.

    All the best.

  13. Horses for courses perhaps? Jabberer and noise now or melody slightly later. Not everyone wants instant access to what people are saying all the time.

    That said I do get the feeling that Google is becoming complacent.

  14. Joe
    Reply

    You are absolutly correct, when I wanted to find out what was happening with the Dan Wheldon crash, I spent my time on Twitter because Google had nothing for some time. Real time is Twitter!

  15. Why the fuss? If you have Internet you have access to all the news sites – pick one and watch it. I was watching the BBC who had reporters on the scene and even they did not know for sure what was happening. Why fill the search results up with false information?

  16. Ive noticed that Google has focused so much on website content that now it seems that when you search for things all you get are blogs and such instead of the companies that you hope to find, Im not surprised they are going down hill as a result, I think they hoped to bring better content to users but instead have forced all of us website owners to make nonsense blogs to help our rankings and If Im looking for sexy red shoes, I dont want to find a story or blog about them I want to find the product!, : )

  17. I’m just waiting for some smart person/company with the right vision to come along like Google did way back when, and make search work better. Goggle just doesn’t work anymore, and sadly, its competitors (Bing, Yahoo!) are no better. Panda was the last straw for me, as a searcher! They made it so much harder for me to ever find what I’m looking for — and so much easier to find garbage of the kind they were supposedly getting rid of. I am still with Google, but only because there is nothing else. The problem you’re reporting today was a problem with the East Coast earthquake, the hurricane, and more. Google has bogged itself down in so many rules and attempts to outsmart the whole world with its algorithms, it’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t even mind the lack of real time news near as much if I could just get real news/research/entertainment/whatever when I want it. Google pays too much attention to pundits and not enough attention to the everyday person. Pundits and such make snide remarks all the time about sites like eHow or Hubpages being content farms. Do regular people? Not that I’ve ever heard. Before I knew what sites were good for which topic, and I could get good results on the first page, and choose the site that I knew would be best for my needs at that time (and honestly, eHow is TOPS for fast, easy to understand info/instructions on any topic. Sure there is some garbage on the site, as on all sites, but if I had a question and needed a fast answer: eHow or Wikipedia, depending on the info I needed. If I was doing research for some project, I could easily find great info in the .edu/.gov searches. After panda, I have to struggle a lot to find what I need. Most often, I get a blog that may be very nice but is NOT what I need at the time because it is just about someone’s personal opinion — interesting reading, but not what I need when I am looking for something specific. Well I’m starting to ramble, but, yeah, I’m mad at google. I have the vision; too bad I’m lost on the technical end and the money! ;)

    • Meant to say I can’t even count on the .edu/.gov searches anymore. I’m looking for studies, journal entries, or university info for consumers. I get some obscure thesis from 20 years ago, or a university’s detailed account of founding faculty, building sites, and history.

      • moonlight
        Reply

        That’s my complaint as well. I use other engines but for a quickie I search Google and get results from last year or further back. I can’t find anything up-to-date in G’s search results.

        The powers that be at G have screwed with it so much it isn’t even a search engine any more. It’s a rag tag trash junk engine that is beginning to circle the drain.

        FINALLY, people are getting good and fed up. The internet bully is dying a slow and painful death. GOOD!!!

        When I want the latest news I can always count on Newsmax.com. They had a story up about the latest Republican debate the other night in less than 5 minutes after it was over.

  18. Tim
    Reply

    I haven’t missed real-time results. I don’t want to know what is being tweeted from Tripoli on a day like today, because I will get the noise mixed in with useful news.

    I use news.google.com, leave the page up, and check on it when I have time. It updates itself often enough.

    On some topics I am going to also search the tweets. For example news on Occupy I suspect is filtered so badly it is mangled into uselessness. I am more interested in what someone on the street tweets than I am in how a CBS reporter presents it.

  20. John
    Reply

    I got a couple of paragraphs in and thought what are you talking about and NO I do not want the latest “instant” claim for idiot of the year to color my results – must be a really slow web week?

  21. Wow. That was a very close to real time blog. You point out a valid hole in Google’s results. And I’m also on board with AJ Tyne’s comment: “Goggle just doesn’t work anymore, and sadly, its competitors (Bing, Yahoo!) are no better.”

  22. abc
    Reply

    I would prefer to wait half an hour and get solid info, than to get a page full of links to rumous and speculation immediately.

  23. I don´t really miss the realtime news in the Google search results. It made the Serps look like mess. If I need news I go to Google´s news page or other news sites. I think search engine results should bring up established facts instead of “hot news”.

  24. I watched all of 9/11 on TV. No need for any search. Gaddafi? He’s dead. What else do you need to know? How did we ever survive before the internet? I love it but it’s not my whole life.

  25. I am done w/google! I am breaking my google crack habbit and going cold turkey. I spent so many hours trying to “fix” my sites.I have about 30 so it is becoming a full time job just cleaning up w/all the panda poo. I am ditching gmail, adsense, webmaster tools, stats…EVERYTHING google is out the door! I hope they get raped in court!

  26. Of course, I miss real-time search in Google. It was very useful during events like earthquakes or other breaking news.

  27. yes that right im just posting in 1 minute my blog have got alot of visitor just use kadafi tewas or gaddafi-death keyword.. nice commet you can check my blog here http://instaforex-id.com/

  28. More than real-time, I miss Google’s old “sort by date” and “sort by relevance” options. (Or, am I just missing how to do it? BTW I mean real sort by, not just picking pages updated since yadda.) Also, is there a simple way (or at all) to search case-sensitive? To me it is shocking not to (as with, no simple way to just “print list of directory files with dates, size, ….” in MS operating systems as is.)

    “Fine minds make fine distinctions.”

  29. Seems to be a symptom of the times, Google has become so much about money-making that they have lost sight of what it is that they are expected to provide. The Panda “upgrade” made Google search irrelevant in my case, knocking out quite many of the unique grassroots news sources in place of a dull parade of mainstream corporate media.

  30. People who know how to think have no use for some one else giving out information which is essentially non useful. It is like reading the editorial page and not believing that there is bias written into it.

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