Microsoft search engine Bing inked a deal with Twitter that includes tweets in search results. Microsoft announced the deal onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit today. The non-exclusive deal made it easy for Google to piggyback on the Bing announcement with their own announcement of a commitment to feature Tweets in search results.
Significance of the Bing / Google Twitter Announcements for Travel:
Tweets aren’t just for your followers on Twitter any more. Travel regions and tourism businesses will need to post relevant tweets and links to benefit from higher visibility among search users whether or not they are users of Twitter. Tweets will show up in Search results.
The upshot: Get tourism businesses in your region tweeting!
Twitter on Bing
Using http://bing.com/twitter will reveal relevant real time Twitter search results. Microsoft also announced that soon Facebook status updates will also be featured on the search engine. What is interesting is that Bing sample results page features the tweeted link title and sample tweets featuring the avatar (photo) and text of the tweet!
Twitter on Google
Marissa Mayer announces Google deal with Twitter at Web 2.0 Summit (youtube)
Surely the enlightenment of embedding Twitter in search results on Google was overdue.
In May this year I reported how Google was not invited to the Twitter Party, and that Twitter search was indeed a critical piece of the search puzzle for Web 3.0 – the Here and Now Web.
It appears now, Google and Twitter have come to a financial agreement that will result in tweets being featured in Google search results.
News on the Twitter deal from the Google Blog
“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. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.”
What will Tweets in Search Results look like? We don’t know yet.
Some users of Firefox have been using a Greasemonkey script which embeds Twitter search results at the top of any Google search result as shown below.
Google itself highlighted the importance of travel regions and tourism operators making effective use of the Twitter platform on its blog post:
“The next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”
Impact of these Twitter announcements from Google and Microsoft:
- The Here and Now Web (Web 3.0) is here. Real time search results and location relevant search results will take on greater importance.
- Twitter will Grow in adoption as tweets get greater visibility beyond the Twitterverse.
- A new era of search engine innovation will come about as engineers figure out how to identify relevant tweets from spam.
- With access to Twitter search results, Google and Microsoft will need to rethink their search result algorithyms and determine how much relative importance to give to tweets.
Share your thoughts?
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Todd,
Thanks for this post and views on the real time web
I agree with your views, just to remind you that outside US and Canada, we don’t have acces to http://www.bing.com/twitter
(their messsage: sorry! Bing Twitter Search is not available in this locale.)
and also, for Example, in France, Twitter is a very small market share (around 600 000 twitter user, less than 2 % of all French web user, and not very active users as in US)
So, you will see the real time web before the european and french guys
Best
Claude
Claude, sometimes in Canada we find ourselves quite a bit behind the US too. And even the US is way behind others – ie: Japan way ahead in handheld adoption. Mary Meeker’s presentation yesterday at Web 2.0 highlighted how handheld adoption leads to significantly higher posting of status updates!
Now 19% of folks report updating status – up from 11% in 2008.
I think what is most significant about this news is that Tweets will cross over into Search which will create revenue for Twitter (no more need to ask @biz or @ev about that)
Most importantly the tweets will influence search and be visible to even non-users which will increase adoption rates for Twitter world wide . . .
and in the world of updating status, look for social web sites like Flickr, Youtube and others to start offering status updates.
Soon, everyone can get in the game of making money off search.
OH goody another place for the spammy spammers to spread their spaminess. This ought to prove interesting as to how they filter people gaming their index from a feed source. This looks more like knee jerk stuff to me than actual advancement of technology. Why would i want to search on GorB for tweets when i can go to T itself. Why would a tweet be relevant to a top 10 result? Would it really unseat a site that is optimized for the term? I could see having some sort of side bar saying this is what people are tweeting about – myrtle beach vacations – for instance. but then again they would have to give up paid ad space to do that which isnt going to happen. Maybe a pay to tweet model where twitter shares the revenue with GorB ROFLMAO
This is a potential game changer — it dimishes the power of the web site and SEO. I addtion, comments about a destination or travel property, hotels, airlines etc. on Twiter have an immediacy that Trip Advisor will lose.
This development is more profund than squalble about Choice and Expedia. Any one remember the squabble between IHG and epedia?
Thanks Carol. It’s all about presence. We’ll look at Web sites one day and say, what were we thinking?
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