Taptu , a mobile search engine that specializes in indexing mobile-friendly websites, just launched a new version of its iPhone app. The new app now includes real-time search results, which are powered by OneRiot . In addition to including these real-time search results, Taptu also worked hard on improving the speed of the app and on providing more relevant search results. Taptu offers apps for the iPhone, iPod touch ( iTunes link ) and Android, as well as a mobile optimized website. Sponsor Taptu first integrated real-time search results from OneRiot in its mobile web interface and in its Android app last month . The mobile apps definitely provide a far superior way of using the service than the mobile site, however. There are two ways to access real-time search results in the app. The homepage now displays the hottest trending topics and a single click on one of these opens up OneRiot search results. In addition, you can also do a normal search and then select 'latest buzz' from the options menu right next to the search box. This same menu also allows you to restrict search to images, videos, blog or Wikipedia articles, as well as to sites and blogs about sports, news or apps. For a closer look at Taptu's feature set, also have a look at our review of the service's web app . Discuss
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Taptu Adds Real-Time Search to Its Mobile Apps
A few months ago Google rolled out Place Pages with the lofty vision of creating a webpage for every place in the world. In addition to a map-view of local businesses, users can access hours, transit stops, reviews and geo-tagged photos. As of today the company is offering a color-coded ranking system for specific aspects of a businesses' services. The question is, does the new feature mark the beginning of the end for restaurant review sites? Sponsor While Yelp gives reviewers a chance to rank a business on a scale of 1-5 stars and Foodspotting ranks individual dishes, Google's new ranking system aggregates comments from across the web based on specific keywords. At a moments glance, users can quickly view a restaurant's food and service in relation to its ambiance and atmosphere. Even the smallest business with little to no web presence can produce useful results. For example, the comments at San Francisco's El Metate Taqueria was enough to produce a ranking on salsa alone. In late November, ReadWriteWeb covered the launch of Google's map-based coupon program where mobile users can access deals through Place Pages. Coupled with the fact that you can save your search results to your favorite maps, users may find less and less reason to visit location-based review sites. In your opinion can Google oust Yelp and Citysearch as the leader in business reviews? Let us know in the comments below. Discuss
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Google Adds Place-Ranking System, Should Yelp Be Afraid?
Google held a major search product event today and among many incredible new products and features displayed was real-time search. Fresh search results pushed live to the search results page, with a pause button above that section of the page. Results are coming in from freshly published web pages, Tweets, MySpace updates and shockingly, Facebook public profiles. Check out the demo video below. Sponsor Want to see real-time results for any query right now? Go to http://google.com/trends and click on any of the hot topics on that page. Replace the search query in that page's URL with a new search term and if real time results are available, you'll be able to see them. This looks a lot like what Collecta offers with its XMPP API. This option should be baked into Google.com's main search results pages soon. The company also says that technologies like personalization and localization will be baked into real-time search in the future. Discuss
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Google Real-Time Search Live Now (Video, Links)
According to an announcement on the Official Google Blog , the search engine giant is rolling out a new format for their universal image results. Set to go live over the next 24 hours, the updated format will now feature one larger image alongside multiple smaller images. Because of this new layout, you'll be able to see "more pictures than before," writes Google Software Engineer Alex Petcherski in the blog post. Sponsor The New Image Results To be clear, this update is for universal image results only - not Google Image search itself. "Universal" results refer to the search results you receive when doing a traditional search on www.google.com. Introduced back in 2007, the term refers to the combined search results from multiple verticals, including image search, news, video search, and the other specialized engines linked from the top of Google's homepage. With universal search, you only have to refer to one set search results page to see all the relevant information on a particular topic. The page serves as the jumping off point for whatever knowledge you're after - whether that's a photo, a video, the latest news, or just good ol' fashioned information. The updated image search results represent a minor change to Google's interface and one that many mainstream users may not have even noticed. But every little tweak that Google makes is only done after extensive testing. In this case, the update allows for one more image to appear in the universal image results box. One image may not seem like a major improvement, but it could mean the difference between a user clicking through to see more or abandoning their Google Search altogether. (You would be surprised how quickly some users give up on a non-productive search. Forget refining queries, they just go elsewhere or stop their search entirely!). Google Announcement's Timing Aimed to Deflate Interest in Bing It's also notable that Google is announcing this change around the same time as Microsoft plans to make another announcement regarding updated features for Bing , the company's new search engine. Since its launch earlier this year, the Bing Search Team at Microsoft has been busy rolling out updates that have included things like a revamped mobile search , improvements to maps , integration with math engine Wolfram Alpha , Twitter integration , and a new visual search interface . As most of these announcements were made, Google would make an announcement of their own - for example, how they were planning on adding Twitter to their results, too . And when Bing announced Visual Search, Google posted to their blog about a Google Experiment called "Fast Flip" which lets you visually peruse print articles online. There's no doubt that the timing of this latest, albeit minor, news about Image Search improvements has to do at least partially with the upcoming Bing announcement. Clearly, we have entered a new era of "search wars." As angel investor Ron Conway noted earlier this fall at the TC50 conference, this time war is a good thing: "I think the huge winner here will be consumers because competition breeds innovation, and this nice little battle between Google and Microsoft is fantastic for consumers." Disclosure: Sarah Perez also freelances for Microsoft's Channel 10. She is not a Microsoft employee. Discuss
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Google Rolls Out New Format for Image Results
