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What do Google employees do when there is an earthquake where they work?

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They sit tight in front of their computers to see how Google real-time search is indexing tweets from the earthquake.

According to Google engineer Matt Cutts:

Overall, realtime search triggered in under two minutes from the earthquake happening and within a minute of the first tweets appearing. The rough timeline (in Pacific time) is

~10:10 – An earthquake happened. (The USGS says the earthquake happened at 10:09:35 a.m.)

10:11 – The USGS government web site started to track the earthquake, with a “?” magnitude.

10:12 – Google’s realtime onebox triggers.

10:13 – USGS web site marked the magnitude as 4.1.

10:20 – USGS site updates their feed.

~10:25 – Google’s earthquake onebox gets updated earthquake info.

All in all, not too shabby, but still a perfect opportunity to identify ways to do better.

One last thing: I love that many Google employees’ first instinct when they feel an earthquake is to start searching on Google to see how well our real-time search works. 

References:

A short note about real-time search. Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO.