Google has introduced a new feature to its search results pages that highlights relevant forum posts and discussions relating to search queries. According to the Official Google Blog, this feature puts emphasis on certain topics that have generated a large amount of forum posts and online discussions.
Before this new feature was introduced Google search just gives you the main site of forums where your search queries are mentioned. But now, aside form giving the main site of the forums, Google search also displays spefici forum topics as indented links to the main forum site. Even more useful are the dates where the last post on the topics were made. So, you can easily identify whether a forum search result is still relevant or outdated already.
It’s quite obvious why Google is introducing this feature aside from the fact that it makes its search service more useful. Niche forums are still pretty active today despite Twitter and Facebook. For some who got stuck in the 90’s online forums are still the best source of personalized and updated information about various topics.
The keypoint here is the fact that Forums, especially the active ones are still pretty good sources of “real-time” information. Something that could compete with Twitter’s “real-time” search feature.
