Google have today announced that forum posts will now be made visible within search listings.
The new results will be available on listings for sites that have a large number of posts for a specific topic related to the search query. If there are a number of different topics for the same query they will be indented underneath the main listing with the number of posts per topic plus the date that they were last updated.
The example that Google presents is on a search for “getting from Rome to Paris” the resulting listing can be seen below:
Google explain that this new function will allow users to gain “a deeper view into the relevant content available on sites throughout the web — even when that content spans multiple pages or discussions”. This move also proves that Google are seeing the major importance of Social Media as well as the functional innovations that these social platforms can provide. This is evidenced even further by the news that Google have expanded their search options to allow users to gain results as up to date as 24 hours ago after pressure from social networking users who have been enjoying real time search results from Twitter for quiet some time.
A complete real time Google search offering may not be too far away, as some savvy Google users discovered that by amending Google search URLs real time search results would be displayed, so the functionality is there but I guess we will just have to wait and see when Google finally chooses to launch this officially.