Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world’s information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.

Back in December, we introduced a string of new search innovations on Google.com to bring our results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web.  We’re delighted to announce that from today this feature will be available in South Africa.

Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter, MySpace and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news reports and blog posts published just seconds before.  When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information on the search results page.

Try searching for a celebrity currently in the news, your favourite sports team or the latest political development.  Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google straight after it’s published on the web.

Additionally, by clicking on “Latest results” or selecting “Latest” from the search options menu, users can get view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling on Google’s results page. You can also filter your results to see only “Updates” from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others.

Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day.  Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our partners including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.cah.

Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you’re in line to buy tickets.

By Dylan Casey, product manager, Google