It was only last week that we mentioned in our Web Directions talk that Google and other search engines were trying to get access to the Twitter firehose but didn’t index the information yet.
Well the “future” we spoke about is here, with Google and Bing both returning Twitter results in their feeds.
In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.
Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.
Bing has also launched Twitter Beta.
This will be great for the “real time” searchers - the 40% of searches that are looking for what’s happening now, or trends, or what people are talking about. I think it’s going to be of limited value to the “navigational” or “informational” searchers - those looking for a specific piece of information, or searching for a brand.
A few months ago I had an obscure problem with my computer that, strangely enough, Google didn’t have any information on when I looked up the error message. I took it to Twitter and found a lot of other users with the same problem, but it was a frustrating experience as I couldn’t see the “conversation” - I could see a user reporting the problem, then tweeting “thanks for the solution” but couldn’t follow tweets back in.
I’m hoping the search engines will be able to address this at some stage as this could really help the navigational searches rather than keeping it for the real time. After all, not everybody wants to hear more about balloon boy.
This post is tagged under: Development, SEO, twitter
Very interesting news that got me thinking about a few things…
I wonder what Google/Bing are paying Twitter for the Firehose. Is it enough to create a viable business model?
Also is Twitter ready to take on the world of black hat SEO that is now going to be turning it’s attention to new ways to game these results?
The financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed but I imagine it’s a lot.
The spam question is an interesting one. Most people I follow have been complaining bitterly about spam-bots on Twitter and it’s only going to get worse. I don’t think Twitter has had a long term solution in place, they seem to do a big sweep every few months and remove the most obvious spam, but it’s been rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic so far.
Techcrunch has an interesting point about the value of this deal:
“For the search engines, the firehose is much more valuable than any single Tweet. They can index it and sift it, looking for patterns and spikes in keywords and shared links to get a better sense of what people across the Web are paying attention to at any given moment. This data can then be folded back into regular search results, even if the top result isn’t a Tweet.”
Sounds like it’s just crying out for the blackhat SEOs to move in and ruin it for everyone.
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