The Power of Twitter and ‘Real Time’ Search

By Annemarie Hunter - Search Marketing Specialist

Search is constantly evolving. It seems every other day a new feature or algorithmic change is announced by one of the search engines to enhance the way we find information online. But one massive shift is currently happening and it’s one that even Google isn’t quite up to speed with. It’s the idea of ‘Real Time’ search, or the ‘Live Web’. It’s about finding what people are discussing right now.

Enter Twitter. For those of you who are still dubious as to what exactly this micro-blogging tool’s value is - this is it. Twitter offers a real time search feature where, at any given moment, you’re able to uncover exactly what people are saying about your topic of interest, instantly. Whether it’s keeping up with the presidential election, a natural disaster, a plane crash or just needing a timely response to a current problem, no other service offers live streaming and up-to-the-minute information on breaking news like Twitter.

Sure Google News reports on recent happenings, but there is still an obvious time lag. Google isn’t real time, it has to crawl and then index a page before you can search for it. A ‘low authority’ page that has just been updated doesn’t stand a chance of ranking highly for a hot topic query. Whereas Twitter gives you raw results immediately, from potentially thousands of sources, filtered by recency and not popularity.

This is not to say Twitter Search will ever surpass Google. Google still leads the way in providing a superior index of the internet. But Twitter is a hot alternative when it comes to accessing the real life information we’re increasingly demanding. The major engines are still yet to tap in to this goldmine of opportunity.