How Twitter Search Will Help Google, Microsoft Bing

One week ago today on Oct. 21, Microsoft and Google both announced deals to index Twitter messages at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Microsoft launched its Bing Twitter site for indexing tweets in real time. Not to be outdone, Google promised that Twitter content will be integrated into Google's search results page in a few months. Yahoo is allegedly working on real-time search with startup OneRiot. 

In response to a report on Bing's growing market share in which eWEEK suggested that indexing Twitter tweets is one way Microsoft hopes to help Bing gain search share, a reader commented: "Indexing Twitter feeds isn't going to grow search engine share. It's only going to make search more useful for the existing share of users."

Is that right? That got eWEEK thinking. Why would Microsoft pay Twitter for its content if it doesn't think that's the type of service or feature that will lure more users to search using Bing? eWEEK surveyed experts in the field and found the jury is still out on that question.

Search Engine Land search guru Danny Sullivan told eWEEK:

"I think Twitter search may help add some small amount to Bing, but I don't see it as somehow causing Bing to soar. I guess I feel Twitter isn't that killer, even though it is useful to have and offers some compelling data."

Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, added:

"Twitter in Bing makes it a better search engine, and they can use it to tweak overall Web results by taking Twitter data into context; e.g. if the link for a page is included in many tweets, it should show up higher in general search results—in real time."

eWEEK then spoke with Gerry Campbell, CEO of Collecta, a real-time search startup that has been surfacing Twitter tweets for months.

Next: Collecta CEO's Views on Indexing Tweets >>