Google has given its realtime search feature its own homepage at google.com/realtime. Searches from this destination still take you to the updates section of a regular Google search.

While realtime search on Google itself isn’t new, there are still some new features Google has revealed along with the homepage. Product Manager Dylan Casey writes:

On the new homepage you’ll find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. So if you’re traveling to Los Angeles this summer, you can check out tweets from Angelenos to get ideas for activities happening right where you are.

In addition, we’ve added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new “full conversation” feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance. We organize the tweets from oldest to newest and indent so you quickly see how the conversation developed.

Google has also added "updates" content to Google Alerts. You can now create an alert specifically for updates to get an email anytime a keyword appears in Twitter  or other sources Google uses for realtime search. You can also set them to email you once a day or once a week so your inbox doesn’t get flooded.