So it looks like Google is having another stab at integrating real time search into its results. In a few search results recently I’ve noticed a little blue bar linking to ‘recent updates in Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and more’:

From the few times I’ve recreated it, it seems that (as expected) it appears when there is a buzz of activity around a keyword – ‘spending review’ triggered it last week – likely because of the government announcements; ‘windows 7 phone’ which, although not breaking news, is still getting a lot of coverage in the social web and blogosphere.

The number updates in real time (and so is probably triggered by a certain number and frequency of updates in Twitter, facebook etc), and links through to Google’s real time specific search engine that was launched a couple of months ago. Looking at the results in ‘Google real time’, listings are heavily dominated by Twitter as you’d imagine – in fact I’ve not managed to find a set of results that actually has Myspace listings yet!

This is a sleek, unobtrusive, useful way of integrating real time search into the results in my opinion – unlike their first attempt which saw a clunky, difficult to follow, distracting scrollbar taking up a good chunk of page 1 real estate. I think people will be a lot more accepting of this if it stays, and importantly for Google, it shouldn’t draw too much attention away from the paid listings.