Google and Yahoo are Both Crazy about Twitter

The two leading search sites intend this week to jump on the real-time-search bandwagon. On Monday, Google announced real-time search results from Twitter. And now, according to a Yahoo Search blog entry that will be posted later Thursday by team members Ivan Davtchev and Shiv Ramamurthi, Yahoo will show relevant tweets of popular, "buzzing" topics in the results page.

Photo: Google and Yahoo are Both Crazy about Twitter

Last month Yahoo tested real-time search, and today the project has become a reality. (Bing has had the capability for real-time search since October with its BingTweets feature, which displays a running feed of tweets that contain your search term.)

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.

Yahoo had previously released a news shortcut with Twitter, which offers photos, video, and Twitter content when your search terms relate to a hot current event. And this fall, Yahoo underwent a major redesign, adding apps and a redesigned interface. In their post Davtchev and Ramamurthi explain, "Now you can see tweets about some of the less popular buzzing topics directly in the search results, usually at the bottom of the page, and you may see those [news shortcut] tweets less frequently."

Yahoo keeps track of trending search topics, and selectively displays Twitter results for those within the regular list of search result links. "The age of the tweets will vary--some will be a minute old, while others may be hours old. Our goal is to feature interesting Twitter content that is relevant to your query and complements the other results you find on the search page," say Davtchev and Ramamurthi.

The efforts to stay in the forefront of search technology are impressive--and surprising, considering that Yahoo and Microsoft just finalized their deal in which Bing will provide search results for Yahoo less than a week ago. Hopefully it's a sign that there will continue to be more choice in search going forward, acording to PC World' report.