Google toyed with some experimental real-time display in standard search over the past six months – but have now given real-time search a home page. Here’s a screen shot.

Google Real Time Home Page

They appear to have made it incredibly powerful and flexible, with timeline, filter by location and other interesting tools. Expect to hear a lot of chatter over this and would bet that the early discussion of the tool takes place in the real-time search results as everyone watches for their own commentary to drift past in live updates. It will be interesting to see lag time and work out ranking factors.