With conversation view, tweets are organized from oldest to newest and are threaded to provide full context around real-time conversations. Conversation view includes replies and retweets. Users can click "Full conversation" below an update to access the threaded-view. In practice, it works as advertised with the occasional tweet or two appearing out of context.
On the location front, instead of just being able to search nearby real-time updates, searchers can also now specify exact locations in the "Custom Location" box to narrow results to a particular city, state or country. Users can also click on the location listed below an update to filter results for that region.
Google has also baked in support for Google Alerts. At the bottom of the results pages, searchers can now click the "Create an e-mail alert for [search term]" to setup a Google Alert for "Updates." Updates is a new type of alert for the status updates that Google Real-time Search indexes. Users can now receive alerts for updates on an as-it-happens, once per day or once per week basis.
Google Realtime Search, accessible via the left-hand search options menu, now also exists as a standalone product at google.com/realtime. It is currently being rolled out to users, but those who can't access the page yet can do so here.
Today's updates are both handy and timely. Just yesterday, Bing, which also dabbles with real-time search, began powering Yahoo search and is now Google's biggest threat in terms of search competition.