Saturday, July 14, 2012

Twitter search gets the Google treatment

Twitter search has been updated with two new developments designed to simplify real-time search for users.

Following a hint from the head of personalisation and recommender systems at Twitter, Pankaj Gupta, last Thursday, the microblogging platform introduced search autocomplete and results specifically from people or organisations the searcher follows.

The autocomplete function works in a similar way to Google Instant, showing the most likely search terms and a drop-down menu as the query is being typed. Twitter engineer Frost Li said this is particularly helpful when looking for a certain Twitter account or trying to follow an event hashtag.

Twitter is also following Google's example in that it will automatically show results for the intended query even if a term has been misspelled. Related search suggestions will also be displayed where people use various terms to talk about the same topic.

Personalised social search

In a bid to offer a more personalised social experience, search results can now also be filtered so only tweets from people who the user follows are displayed.

Ms Li said: "These updates make it even easier to immediately get closer to the things you care about."

While all the search updates are rolled out on twitter.com, autocomplete, spelling corrections and related search suggestions are also available on Twitter for Android and Twitter for iPhone.

It is undeniable that Twitter is committed to offering its users a more personalised experience, much like what Google said it was trying to achieve when it rolled out Search plus Your World in January.

At the time, Twitter said the move by Google was "bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users" as it felt the changes would make it harder for people to find the most relevant results.

"Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information ... As we've seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results," it said in a statement.

Google said it was "surprised" at Twitter's comments, particularly as Twitter had instructed the search giant not to index public tweets.

But as the battle in the world of social search hots up, what is best for users? Whose camp are you in, Google or Twitter?

Source: http://www.newsreach.co.uk/social-media-marketing/twitter-search-gets-the-google-treatment

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