People have long been turning to the web to find information — and as social and mobile continue to gain momentum, this trend will only increase. More and more of today’s searchers want late-breaking information that answers their queries with the greatest relevancy. In other words, they want the engines to tell them what’s going on right now for a given topic.

Search engines have responded to this demand by incorporating real-time search results into their offerings. One engine leading the way is OneRiot, a real-time search engine that provides results influenced by what people are sharing on Twitter, Myspace, Digg, Facebook and more. We interviewed Tobias Peggs, President of OneRiot, to learn more about the engine and the future of real-time search.

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[360i]: Since OneRiot launched, the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) have incorporated more real-time search functionality. How will OneRiot compete against them and stand out?

[Tobias Peggs]: Across all search engines, studies have shown that 40% of users’ queries are best served by realtime search results. These satisfy users searching for things as heavyweight as “Oil Spill” or as entertaining as “Lindsay Lohan.” Those users are expecting their search engine to tell them what’s going on right now for that topic. That’s exactly what OneRiot provides. We find the news, stories and videos that are really resonating with people right now for any topic. In addition we offer a partner API that enables 3rd party search engines to show our results to their users. We also operate the RiotWise network specifically for monetizing realtime search results – both on our own site and our partners’ properties.

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At Google, it’s high time for real time.

The search giant began rolling out updates earlier this week that it says will increase the relevancy and depth of search results. According to Google, the new features “bring search results to life” through a real-time content stream aggregating the most relevant updates from microblogging platforms like Twitter and FriendFeed as well as news articles and blog posts as they are published.

Google is fueling real-time results through partnerships with Twitter (a relationship announced in October), Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Indenti.ca.

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