BingTweets Hops on the Real Time Search Train

Emerging throughout the hype that is surrounding Twitter and FriendFeed, real time search is receiving heaps of attention throughout the industry. In turn, real time search engines have been popping up everywhere. Among the notable additions is BingTweets, which quite practically combines the search results of both Bing and Twitter Search. Owned by Microsoft, it is a separate entity from Bing and its slogan, “Fusing Twitter Trends with Bing Insights”, accurately describes its function as an opinion enhanced decision engine.

Recently, search industry authorities met at CrunchUp to define and discuss real time search. At the event, various real time search engines were introduced and demoed, highlighting the abundance of new platforms catering to trends, micro-blogs, and real time streams. Seesmic, Brizzly, Lazyfeed, and Wowd were all introduced and all exhibited new ways of embracing as well as displaying real time search results, or Twitter. Some of the main issues raised were how to filter results to keep them relevant and somewhat spam free as well as whether Twitter makes up all or most of current real time search and how long that may last.

BingTweets, in my opinion, seems to have considered all or most of the aforementioned issues. The site individually brings together a Twitter feed, Bing search results, Twitter trending topics, and a ‘share this’ box which allows users to tweet their results. One can search for something on Bing, follow another topic on the Twitter feed, browse trending topics, and share their various results all at the same time. Conversely, a user can have all results focused on the same topic, to receive the most relevant data (Bing) as well as what is currently being said about it (Twitter). An ideal setting for search, one could argue…

However, one thing that immediately jumped out at me was the fact that the compressed Bing section cut out the ads displayed to the right of the organic search results. Although it is possible to scroll over, it is certainly not your first instinct, as most of the search results are in plain view. This raises broader questions of how real time search might effectively implement sponsored links without losing clicks and whether PPC ads will get lost in these multi feed platforms.

It is clear, though, that Microsoft is keen on beefing up their search presence, and it would surprise me if they hadn’t considered all of the above. It looks increasingly likely that they will strike a deal with Yahoo, taking over a significant chunk of the search market and making them a viable contender to Google’s throne. Shockingly, Google is one of the few companies yet to drop a real time search engine. They continue to exhibit untouchable sentiments, with actions such as their recent snubbing of the concerns of European newspapers. One thing is certain; Twitter and FriendFeed have brought real time information streams into the spotlight. Who dominates this train and how is unsure, as it has not yet arrived at the station.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.