The news about Google’s real-time search has been out for a little while now, but many people are still wondering how this is affected by real-life situations.  Well – Matt Cutts was gracious enough to show by example.  He displays exactly how Google tracked a recent mild earthquake and how long it took to show results on Google.

It’s good to see that their real-time search update actually functions as intended, and I can see the potential for it to help in a variety of ways.  Being the top search engine and a huge point where people check on things every day, getting your breaking news from Google (for info relevant to what you’re looking for) may get info to some people (who don’t check the news so often) faster.  Whether or not Google should take this role is not something that’s universally agreed upon, but there are visible benefits.