NOTE - The original version of this post was written November 17, 2009. I initially wrote it to submit to YOUmoz, but since there were many posts submitted before mine, I learned it would take at least 3 weeks before my post was published. And since Google recently announced they were launching a "new" real-time search service, I contacted SEOmoz to see if they would let me submit an updated version in case my post was no longer relevant. However, I have found that not much has improved and as others have stated, the recent developments of including random Twitter comments have made the search results even worse. The post below is updated as of December 18, 2009 and it primarily covers "near" real-time search results rather than "true" real-time search which includes the Twitter stream, etc.

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Ever since Twitter exploded onto the real time search scene, Google has been scrambling to improve the "freshness" of their search results in order to compete. However, it looks like they have a long way to go.

Let me explain.

There's no denying that search engines have always been prone to spam. However, I am probably not alone in thinking Google historically has done a pretty good job of combating spam and that their search results are much more relevant this year than they were five years ago. That being said, in just the past few months I have noticed that a lot of "hacked" websites in addition to other low-quality sites were starting to rank very well for popular trending keyword phrases. (I blogged about this earlier last month - Hacked Website Spam Running Rampant in Google Search Results)

For this example, I am choosing the keyword phrase "loleini tonga nationality" which is the 14th most popular keyword searched in the past hour on December 18, 2009 according to Google Trends.

When I searched for loleini tonga nationality on Google, I was not surprised to discover that the top 10 results on Google are all junk. Some of the results are exploited legitimate websites which redirect to sites that force you to install malicious software and some are recently created pages on authoritative websites which link to spammy Made-For-AdSense sites. Either way, they are all junk. Also, it is important to note that eight of the ten results have been updated within the past 6 hours. There's no question that the strategy is to target these keywords because of their recent popularity and so far, has obviously been a successful one.

A breakdown of the results:

1. Lefthandpath.net - Hacked website that redirects to another site to force fake Anti-Virus scan and install malware.

2. Webstats.touko.fr/phpmyvisites.php - Another hacked website that redirects to another site to force fake Anti-Virus scan and install malware.

3. Cayey.upr.edu - This is the site for the University of Puerto Rico that appears to have been hijacked somehow. When you click through to the site from the SERPs, you are redirected to what appears to be the correct page. Perhaps the site is using doorway pages and cloaking to drive traffic? Either way, not at all relevant to what I am searching for.

4. WomensOnlineMagazine.com - Surprise! Yet another hacked website that redirects to another site to force fake Anti-Virus scan and install malware.

5. Newsnidea.com - Finally, a search result that does not redirect you to some other site. However, it is clearly a site posting useless information about trending keywords without providing any value to the user.

6. Digg.com -  Spam submission to Digg.com loaded with the targeted keywords in the description.

7. MaybeNow.com Wiki - Irrelevant list of related questions, blogs, etc.

8. CCortez.com - Low quality search results page.

9. 123BreakingNews.com - Another Made-for-AdSense site targeting trending keywords without providing any kind of useful content.

10. Surchur.com - A low-quality social bookmarking site full of spammy results.

As you can see above, these are not relevant results. I still have no idea what Loleini Tonga's nationality actually is. Since the "spammy" sites often target trending keywords, they can rank faster and higher before any authoritative sites can generate quality relevant content that will eventually push down the lower quality sites. I think that in order for any real time (or near real time) search engine to be successful, there must be a balance between freshly updated results and relevancy.