Google on Thursday rolled out a standalone site for real-time searches that will pull news stories, blog posts, and updates from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Buzz.
Google integrated social-networking updates into its core search product late last year, but Realtime Search will be a separate search destination for those who only want results from sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Facebook, or MySpace.
The service is live now, and is accessible by clicking the "Updates" button on the bar to the left of Google.com search results, or by going directly to google.com/realtime.
A quick glance at Realtime Search displayed results primarily from Twitter, with one FriendFeed update thrown in. What makes this different from Twitter search? Google has added some customization features, like the ability to drill down by location. If you want to see what people are saying in your area, click the "nearby" button. If you want to know what people are saying in Chicago or London or Tokyo, click "custom location" and enter your city of choice.
"So if you're traveling to Los Angeles this summer, you can check out tweets from Angelenos to get ideas for activities happening right where you are," Dylan Casey, a Google product manager, wrote in a blog post.
Google also added a "conversations view," which will show you a complete Twitter conversation. "Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself," Casey wrote. "With the new 'full conversation' feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance. We organize the tweets from oldest to newest and indent so you quickly see how the conversation developed."
Finally, Realtime Search has been added to Google Alerts, so if you want to keep up with tweets about a particular topic via e-mail, Google will send you all mentions daily, weekly, or as they occur.
The feature is available in 40 languages, though geographic options and conversation views are just in English, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish for now.