With social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter putting a greater emphasis on search, the popularity of real-time search results is on the rise, which may make real-time search engine optimization (SEO) more important. But, while you can break down Google searches by the last 24 hours, it’s not really possible to get real-time results from the world’s most popular search engine – at least not officially.
Earlier this year Google unveiled search options that allow users to break down search results by the last year, week or 24 hours. But Ran Geva, CEO of search engine Omgili, writes on the company blog that users can actually get "near real-time" results by slightly changing the URL of a search engine results page.
As Geva points out, a search for results from the last 24 hours gives users the following URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=barack%20obama&hl=en&output=search&tbs=qdr:d&tbo=1. In the URL, Geva says the "qdr" stands for query date range, and by changing the letter after it, results can be modified.
This means using qdr:h will give users results for the past hour, qdr:n gives results from the last minute and qdr:s gives results from the last second.
With many people using search functions in Twitter and Facebook it would appear that Google is looking at ways to provide more real-time search results. Earlier this year in an interview with the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Google’s Marissa Mayer called real-time search "interesting" and said the company believes it will play a big role in the future of search.
