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Google PuSH for Instant Real-time Search
Google is making advances in real-time search which will eventually allow content to be indexed mere seconds after it goes live online.
The problem that plagues all search engines right now is that people can move faster online than bot crawlers. A user can tweet a link referring to new content immediately after it is published, well before Google’s crawlers happen upon the site; there is simply too much information on the web for even Google to be everywhere at once.
In a bid to be the most up to date provider of information online, Google increasingly needs to have real-time search. It’s for this reason that Google paid Twitter $10 million to include tweets in its search results. Twitter is not the be-all and end-all of real-time search however, despite the media hype, which is why Google is developing its own real-time platform.
The answer in theory is deceptively simple. Search crawlers spend a lot of time bumbling through the web searching for new content, and whilst the bots are programmed to prioritise certain sites, the whole process is by no means targeted.
Google’s new PuSH platform would mean a publisher could inform Google exactly when fresh content was uploaded onto the website, which could then be crawled in a matter of seconds. In this way rather than wasting time constantly checking to see whether new content has been added to a website, a crawler would only be sent on request.
As a concept this seems blindingly obvious. Fire engines don’t drive around cities on the off-chance that they might stumble across a new fire. They wait for a call when there definitely is a fire then go and deal with it.
Whether Google can implement a similar principle in practice with search crawlers is another question. There is always going to be ongoing concerns with spammers manipulating such a system, but if Google can make PuSH a working reality, then it will have achieved a significant milestone in search history.
Google News posted by Scott Tickner on 04 March 2010
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PuSH with trust... it can't happen soon enough
Love the idea of being able to tell Google I have new content and want it indexed immediately. The key to its success will be implementing "trust" alongside it so that spammers are removed. Every day there are many additions / deletions and updates and we don't want to wait for a random indexing to have these show up in search results.
Comment posted by Rob Leslie on 04/04/2010 20:55:26
