Over the last couple years Google has been moving more towards a universal search model that provides searchers more diverse results than simply listings for related static pages on the web.  Over the course of the last year and a half you have probably noticed YouTube videos, Google Shopping results, book results, blog posts and many more different types of results returned for certain search queries.

The most recent addition to Google search engine results pages is related forum posts.  Google introduced these types of results on September 30, 2009.  For certain types of search phrases, you may now find a series of recent (or in some cases not so recent) forum posts.

Here is an example for a recent search for “cooking chili in a crockpot”:

I have also noticed that the same exact thing is happening with Yahoo! Answers posts for several “How To” types of questions.

Google has made mention of placing more emphasis on returning relevant “real-time” results for search queries… this seems to be a step in that direction.

This opens up an additional reason for webmasters and Internet marketers to add forum marketing to their overall strategy.  Not only does having an active forum presence in your market beneficial for ranking easily in organic search results as in the example above, it provides a great opportunity to establish a voice of authority and build some nice backlinks from high page rank authority sites.