Oneupweb have carried out an eye-opening eye-tracking study into the effectiveness of real-time web search results. The study split a group of users into “consumers” searching for products you would consider buying or “foragers” looking for current news and information on a topic. The results were mixed to say the least:

73% had never heard of real-time results before participating this study.

Only a quarter of the consumers cared for the real-time results compared to 47% of the information foragers.

The report also showed the users took more than ten seconds to to settle their gaze on the real-time results, but the foragers were more willing to spend time on the page which could be indicative of their willingness to consider more options before clicking and hence their increased likelihood to test the real-time results.

So the results perhaps don’t show real-time search to be quite as popular as the buzz may suggest – not yet anyway, but as users adapt the social aspect of search will become ever more relevant as real-time becomes a reality.

The entire forty five interview can been seen below, which Schmidt touches upon a number of topics from the forthcoming Chrome OS to the future of super-fast broadband, but our interest was piqued by the discussion on the Real-time search and social media.

Schmidt discusses the value of real-time information sources, which is more than just Twitter and Facebook, with the big challenge not being a question of indexing this data but how to rank and sort it. As we see such a huge increase in social media content it changes the way people consume information and Schmidt believes that “the great challenge of the age” is learning how to rank it all.

Do you think Google is up to the challenge or have Bing stolen a march on the Mountain View giant here?

The teams over at Bruce Clay and Hudson Horizons have both done great jobs of covering the event, kicking-off with Danny tackling the question of “What is real-time search, really?”

He answered by stating real-time is all about getting content within seconds of being published, Twitter being the obvious leader here, so real-time search it can be argued is all about finding microblogged content. This is potentially where the value lies, making sense and ranking the various results in a clean form. As a number of other panelists went on to give their take on real-time it’s interesting to read the range of perspectives and opportunity that people see in the technology.

The future of real-time and news, not just delivery but how the two link together is something we’re excited by at Moreover – what value do you see in real-time?

Real-time Web is a pretty hot topic at the moment, as the various players find their role in the space from search to real-time news services, such as ourselves here at Moreover, it’ll be interesting to watch how this sector evolves and if it will usher in a new era of the Web.