Fresh information from blogs, news sites, Twitter and other popular hangouts will appear in Google’s search results more quickly as the company aims to give people a more comprehensive look at what’s happening on the Web.
The feature unveiled on Monday represents Google Inc’s most significant step yet in the field of “real-time” search — a catch phrase for the torrent of information constantly being shared on blogs and the personal pages of social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
As those destinations have turned into increasingly popular forums for swapping opinions, offering news tips and highlighting interesting stories, Google, Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp all have been scrambling to retool their search engines so they reel in and showcase real-time data more rapidly.
Google reached a deal in October to blend Twitter updates, or “tweets,” into its results, but hadn’t explained how its system would work until Monday.
Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, has included a section for tweets since late October. Yahoo began relying on tweets to point out hot news stories in its results last month.
Twitter’s own search engine doesn’t attempt to identify which tweets are the most relevant to each request; it simply provides a chronological list of the updates containing a specified word or phrase.
In Google’s version of real-time search, a section of its main results page will include a capsule that automatically scrolls relevant information within a few seconds after it pops up in the Web index.
Normally, a new search request was the only way to see the blog posts, status updates and other information that Google had collected since the previous query.
With the change, a person requesting information about US President Barack Obama, for instance, will see the usual set of static links, photos and video, as well as the capsule with pertinent tweets, blog posts and news stories.
The real-time data won’t show up right away for everyone because it will take Google’s computer centers a few days to make it work everywhere.
Google’s real-time information eventually will be expanded to include some of the chatter on Facebook and MySpace, the world’s two largest social networks.
Although Google announced its partnerships with the sites on Monday, the feeds from Facebook and MySpace won’t start appearing in the real-time results until early next year, said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search products and user experience.
As with Google’s Twitter alliance, Mayer declined to say how much the company is paying Facebook and MySpace for better access to their users’ musings. The contributions from Facebook and MySpace will be limited to commentary that already can be read by anyone logged into the sites.
Microsoft and Yahoo also have worked out deals so their visitors can see some Facebook material.
Google is trying to provide better real-time results to maintain its huge lead in search as Microsoft and Yahoo prepare to team up in a partnership that still needs regulatory approval. Google processes about two-thirds of the search requests worldwide while Yahoo and Microsoft handle a combined 10 percent.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique