Until today, I didn’t know about Google Realtime!

I mean, I knew that Google had incorporated real time info into its main search results, but I didn’t know that Realtime is now a stand alone real-time search engine which returns up to the minute search results from social media, news articles and blog posts.

Google Realtime can be accessed from the top menu of the main Google site or via it’s own web address.

Once you’ve entered a search for a specific topic, you can adjust the timeline of your search and see the top updates on the left side of the page.

There are also a number of tools you can use to refine your search on the results page.

You can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in any location you specify. So, for example, if you want to browse only results originating near where you are, you can select “nearby”. Or if you want to find out about heritage buildings in Montreal, you can set a custom location of Montreal, QC.

There’s also a “full conversation” view so that you can follow an entire discussion from oldest to newest posts. This is especially helpful for search results from Twitter. Unfortunately, clicking on “full conversation” takes you to a new page, but you can get back to the original search page by using the browser back button.

Anyway, I think this is a really cool addition and only adds to my belief that Google will soon be taking over the world…hmmmm, I think I’ll go do a Realtime search for “Google world domination”