Microsoft and Google Announce Integrated Results from Twitter

by Dema Zlotin | October 26, 2009

Last week, both Microsoft and Google announced they would be integrating results from Twitter in their search results. Twitter’s real-time tweets will be indexed and presented in a structured way for relevant user queries. Additionally, Microsoft announced that Facebook status updates will also be indexed. Not to be outdone, Google announced their Social Search initiative that provides content relevant about your query from your social graph. A prototype will be available in a few weeks at Google Labs. Microsoft has a working prototype of Twitter-only search and it’s available at www.bing.com/twitter

This move has been long anticipated given the stated goals of all search engines — to index all information and provide relevant results based on user queries. Covario believes this deal will have the following impact:

Providing real-time “tweets” or “status updates” to the search engines will likely become an ongoing source of revenues for Twitter and Facebook. No deal terms were provided for either Google or MSFT.
“Tweets” and “status updates” by individuals and groups will now have an even broader audience than before with such comments available directly on Google and Bing — and eventually Yahoo once Bing powers Yahoo search.
Local and mobile searches will likely incorporate location-relevant tweets due to Twitter’s recent addition of geo-identification to mobile tweets.

Actionable Insight 1: Advertisers should start to actively monitor Twitter and Facebook conversations about their brands and products. Negative postings should be addressed quickly in accordance with your social media response policy — especially since these posts will become viewable via search engines faster than ever.

Actionable Insight 2: Given the torrid pace of growth of the media type, continue to refine social media strategies to drive consumer engagement and interest.