Google's real-time search will bridge the gap between social networking and search marketing, providing the opportunity to boost traffic for those who take advantage of social media marketing. The Mountain View giant's latest innovation offers real-time search results from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social networking sites.

According to one search engine optimisation (SEO) specialist, real-time search "is about as direct as it gets" when it comes to social networking and search marketing.

"Google has been working toward the roll-out of real-time search for years," observes internet marketing expert Peter Crisafi. "Following a poor search engine performance from its own service, Google Finance, experts set out to create what it called a QDF algorithm, which determines which queries will be augmented with the most recent content available, in addition to the content with the highest page rank."

Businesses which take advantage of social networking portals therefore have the opportunity to "really drive traffic", he concludes. Many such organisations avail of the benefits of unique online news content to harness the power of social networks, with recent research identifying that the majority of Twitter traffic goes to news sites. Movies, technology and gadgets and medical sites come next.

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