Google To Revive Realtime Search, Thanks to Google+

by Ben Parr

Google Realtime Search is coming back soon, and it will include data from Google+ and other social sources.

Realtime Search was, until last month, the search giant’s method of delivering relevant data from Twitter, Facebook and other social media services in real time. Whenever a major current event made headlines — such as Osama bin Laden’s death — Google Search would start displaying tweets and Facebook updates from users talking about the recent developments. It made Google‘s search engine more relevant during major world events.

It didn’t last, though. Google took Realtime Search down in July after it failed to come to an agreement with Twitter for continued access to Twitter‘s firehouse of data. Without a constant stream of tweets, the product was far less useful. 

“The value the product was providing was not enough,” Google Fellow Amit Singhal said about the decision to turn off the feature during a search panel in Mountain View, California.

When asked about if or when Realtime Search would return, Singhal responded by saying the Google Search team is “actively working” on bringing the product back. He added that the team was experimenting with adding data from Google+ and other sources. It seems as if Google doesn’t believe it needs Twitter data to deliver a compelling real-time search offering.

Danny Sullivan, the panel’s moderator and Search Engine Land editor in chief, also asked the panel why the Google+ stream doesn’t have its own search engine (it’s one of the social network’s most requested features). 

“We are on it,” Singhal responded. 

Google Warning Users They May Be Infected By Malware

by Ben Parr

Google has identified a piece of malware that is redirecting unusual search traffic to its servers, prompting the company to warn affected users.

“Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers,” security engineer Damian Menscher wrote on the company’s blog. “After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software.”

The malware has affected an unspecified number of users, but apparently it was enough for the company to announce that they will be displaying a “prominent notification” at the top of google search results to anybody they believe is infected.

“This particular malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called ‘proxies.’ We hope that by taking steps to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies, we can help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections.”

Google has never used its search engine as a massive malware warning system for users, although it did accidentally mark every website on the web as harmful in 2009.

Google Launches Chrome Extension to Block Websites From Search Results

by Ben Parr

Google has released an experimental Chrome extension that attempts to curb the proliferation of so-called content farms.
The extension, Personal Blocklist, adds a new link underneath any Google search result that lets users remove an entire website from search results.
Personal Blocklist also places a link at the bottom of search result pages affected by the extension so users can still see the results they’ve blocked. Users can also manage their block lists by clicking on the extension’s icon.
Google says that this Chrome extension is all about curbing the rise of content farms, websites that create vast quantities of low-quality content and rely on search for their traffic. When users block such a site, that information is transmitted to Google, where it could potentially be used as part of the company’s complex search algorithms.
In other words, Google is debating whether to use explicit user feedback and human input in its search algorithm. It’s a move that’s definitely out of character for the famously algorithmic-centric company, but it has had limited success in stopping content farms — often characterized as sites like Yahoo’s Associated Content or some of Demand Media’s properties (though Google doesn’t call out anyone specifically) — from dominating search results with low-quality articles created on-the-cheap.
Last month, Google’s Matt Cutts outlined the company’s plan for combating search spam, emphasizing recent changes to the algorithm and a redesigned document-level classifier as just the start of its anti-spam efforts. However, Google also admitted that there has been an uptick in search spam, mostly from the content farms.
We welcome Personal Blocklist extension as a great tool for personalizing search results, but it’s also an admission that Google hasn’t quite figured out how to weed out the content farms. Google is hoping that an injection of human input can help it clean up its search results pages.