Twitter serious about search strength

Dan Leahul, revolutionmagazine.com, 07 May 2009, 03:35PM

LONDON - Twitter is tweaking its search function and will soon start indexing the links included in tweets, creating a real-time mini Google.

Twitter: search index coming soon

Twitter's vice president of operations Santosh Jayram revealed yesterday that Twitter is planning on expanding its search function, no longer will it be a stream of text-based tweets, but will include links to millions of web pages as well.

Although Twitter will not be able to compete with Google in terms of pure numbers, it will have a leg-up in speed and relevancy, creating a real-time search engine.

Jayram, who previously worked at Google, said Twitter's recent emphasis on its search prowess will also include a reputation ranking system, meaning that all tweets will not be equal.

However, minute details on just how Twitter ranks its users has yet to be hammered out, but it is assumed that number of followers and retweets will factor into the equation.

Other bugs need to be worked out before a full launch, such as how to differentiate between retweets, or redundant search results, but analysts see the service as a way for Twitter to finally monetise the website, by placing ads next to its indexed results.

This article was first published on revolutionmagazine.com