Google took the plunge into the world of real-time search earlier this week when it unveiled a "latest news" ticker on its search results pages that aggregates Facebook status updates and tweets moments after publication.
The move is great for consumers hungry for up-to-date news, but it could be bad for SEOs who work hard to push websites to the top of the search engine results. It has the potential to be so disastrous, in fact, that Marty Weintraub, CEO of SEO firm AimClear, said SEOs are "pretty much screwed," MediaPost reports.
Real-time results could only confuse the average consumer and make the concept of SEO even more confusing for marketers who are already flummoxed, according to Weintraub. The real-time results appear at the very top of a results page, which is also the most coveted spot for every online marketer.
When consumers search for a particular brand, there's a chance that the brand's competition will show up in the real-time results. Visiting the competition's website in turn leads Google to create personalized search results for that consumer, meaning that the competitor's page always pops up in their results -- essentially undoing any SEO efforts.
How then can publishers and marketers work around the issue? Weintraub suggests that measuring traffic and site conversations will be the best way to evaluate organic listings. "If organic traffic increases on a page for a specific keyword, then it's reasonable to assume that page's ranking in the 'average' Google result has improved," he said.