Google Real Time Search Results (SERPs): fad or flipping useful?

Are Google’s real time search results a PR stunt to win back traffic lost to Bing or a truly great new product development?

My girlfriend rushed up to me last night as I was typing up my Bob Dylan post and burst into our spare room (which doubles as my writing/beer/photography studio and her teaching homework room) and starting ranting about a brilliant advert for the Sun.

Deep in concentration (and laughing at Dylan’s fake hair in the video to his new Christmas song ‘Must be Santa’) I nipped onto Google and typed in something I expected to find no results for: ’sun advert’.

Right I was, nada.

Except then I noticed Google real time search ads and realised that these new fangled search results that were being used for nothing more than vanity exercises by egotistical tweeters or updates on Tiger Woods gossip, actually had a genuine use.

I was waiting seconds rather than minutes before through the fast incoming tweets praising the ad, a selfless tweeter posted a YouTube link straight to a copy of the advert (which you can see at the bottom of the page).

Google’s real time results are a great PR exercise and prove to a certain extent that Google are the search engine pushing boundaries and making searching online more personal. I ‘ll bet they’ve bumped their market share of searches up hugely recently but the test of time will be if small incidents like mine become the type of useful experience that the online population begin to demand and use on a regular basis.