This week Google and Bing have both announced that they have reached their own agreements with Twitter allowing the search engines to display real time tweet updates in their search results. Bing has also struck up a similar deal with Facebook to display their updates; however there has been no announcement from Google that they will follow suit.
According to the Google Blog “search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and [they] look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months”.
This will allow search engine users to access real time observations and therefore receive the latest news with ease. See below for an example of how this will appear on Bing:
The question now being asked is how this will affect SEO practices? With user reviews already heavily influencing online buyers this is sure to make Twitter even more important to SEO agencies and businesses; whether online or offline. This fresh access to public opinion and thoughts that has never been possible before is yet another step towards making the web real time.
Source:
http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2009/10/21/bing-is-bringing-twitter-search-to-you.aspx
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html
About the author: Stephanie Villegas
SEO Executive - Stephanie Villegas-RossStephanie is an SEO Executive at 4Ps Marketing. She graduated from the University of Sussex with an English Literature degree. After leaving university Stephanie worked in offline Marketing, but soon sought out a position at 4Ps Marketing after craving the fast pace of online Marketing and the constant evolution of Social Media Optimisation.