Today Google and Bing, two of the top search engines, announce that they have added real time search which will feature results from Twitter and soon Facebook updates. Here is a link to give you an example of what I mean by this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&esrch=RTSearch&tbo=p&q=Google+real+time&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1g-z1g8


As you can see halfway down the page is a real time results box which is being updated every second with twitter posts, articles and blog postings.
This means a lot to the SEO world and the organic listings. What it means is content must be updated frequently and keyword research must be done often. 


This is a huge step for Social Media Marketing. Businesses who were making the decision to get into the world of social networks have their question answers with the introduction of real time search. Twitter and Facebook are essential to climbing on search rankings. However real time search will only be beneficial to the companies that constantly update their social network pages. Just having a Twitter or Facebook page means nothing unless it is active. 


Overall real time search can be a very beneficial for the social network gurus and the companies with very hardworking, knowledgeable and active digital marketing departments or have hired the right online marketing company to work for them.

Google software engineer Matt Cutts, in an interview with WebPro News, has recently alluded to the fact that website speed may factor into Googles search engine rankings for 2010. This could be seen as very good news or bad news depending on how well your website is managed. Small Companies with fast sites could get a bit of a boost over some bigger companies whose sites are slower because of all of the content on their site. However unless your website is as slow as molasses I still don't think it will hurt companies with slower sites too much. I think it is a way for Google to speed up the web as a whole. Website Speed may very well replace meta tags as a new factor because recently search engines as stated that meta tags are not as much as a factor as they used to be.


Factoring in website speed is a good way to speed up the web and I like most people get very frustrated waiting for a site to load. However, there are so much already factoring into search results that I don't know how much time and effort marketers and business owners will put into making their site the fastest on the web. Content is key and it is worth it to sacrifice a little speed for more quality content. So in the end marketers need to find the perfect mix of quality content and website speed.


Matt Cutts interview:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/11/13/google-page-speed-may-be-a-ranking-factor-in-2010