Bing adds Twitter posts to search results in real-time

The software giant said it would start indexing only the tweets of a few thousand people, based on their follower count and tweet volume, including former US vice president Al Gore and TV presenter Ryan Seacrest.

The Twitter results will show up independent from the main body of search results, however they will only appear when users add "Twitter", "tweet" or "@" beside the name of the person they are searching.

The search result will include the person's latest tweets, along with a link to "see more tweets" from that individual.

Sean Suchter, general manager of Microsoft's search technology centre, wrote on his blog: "Today we're unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.

"We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter's public API to surface Tweets in people search.

"We'd love to hear your feedback as we think through future possibilities in real time search."

Bing has launched the initiative ahead of Google, which has added Google profiles and Facebook profiles to its search results, but is yet to highlight tweets.