Recently, there was a small post on Twitter blog on the 5th of this month mentioning that the site has added new technology to provide higher quality search results for user queries by displaying tweets that could be more useful for the user.

This can be considered as the first step from Twitter’s part to improve the quality of Twitter Search by adding new features relating to relevancy and search quality factors to the search algorithm of the website. Twitter is also hoping to build a new ranking algorithm system which will take into account hot trends and also the reputation of Twitter users. This decision was taken by the site after noticing a lot of unwanted clutter in the public timeline especially around trending topics.

Currently, what Twitter search does is to display results based on the keyword match typed in by the user and also by showing the most recent tweets. The first Twitter search area to get the relevancy filter is Trending Topics; this was done to reduce the noise that the Search tool of the site has. This is the first indication of the various steps that will be taken by Twitter to improve on the quality of its search by adding relevancy factors to the linkage data. The post on Twitter blog mentioned that the change is not very noticeable at the moment but they intend to improve on it to provide high end search result to all its faithful users.

Anyone can test out these new changes by clicking on any one of the trending topics at Twitter search. Twitter has also released news information that it is planning to experiment with retweet buttons by adding these to some user accounts. And this news has generated more interest among the Twitters than the addition of relevancy factors to Twitter Search.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Twitter has once again confirmed the fact that they are not going to allow other search engines access to their private tweets. Because of the recurrent confusion regarding this matter, the website has decided to do something more concrete so that such false rumors do not do the round any more.

The report about the so called ‘Twitter hole’ appeared in the LA Times; according to this report, Google had some kind of a special access to all the private tweets which have been actually protected by its owners from being made public. In reply to this, TechCrunch clarified that this access to protected tweets that Google was given was before these account holders had locked down their accounts and protected their tweets. If the account has been made private after the tweets are released then they cannot be un-cached; this should pretty much clear the confusion that arose out of the whole Google episode.

Twitter has made this point quite clear on its help page where it says that if you have a public account and has decided to make it private, then all the updates after the time of protection will be locked and made private. But all the tweets before the time of protection will still be public to any other user. This rule goes for all websites including Google and Topsy which is a Twitter-specific search engine.

Google always relies on the last information it has in hand and hence will keep re-visiting the tweets that were posted before the account was locked and this will go on for a few weeks or months. But Topsy only displays public tweets; once the account is protected, a click on the refresh button and all the tweets vanish.

It is finally up to the account holder to make sure your tweets are accessed by only those who you want to follow you or you might end up getting retweeted for some of your private tweets.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Let me introduce you to five search tools on the Twitter webpage which may have gone unnoticed till now. These are useful and definitely worth a try.

The first one which has great local search implications is Schmap: Trending Restaurants and Bars search tool which can give you information and tweets about restaurants and bars in thirteen different cities across the world. You can also browse by the category of food and also by geographical location like district or neighborhood. This is definitely an interesting search option for all the food connoisseurs out there.

Areaface is the second interesting search tool on Twitter which allows you to search for other Twitter users in a specific town or city. You can click anywhere on the map provided to read recent tweets from that particular location. What makes this tool highly interesting and unique is that you can also narrow down the results by keyword enabling you to connect with other users who have similar interests.

TwitterJobSearch.com is the third tool through which you can search for thousands of jobs that are advertised on the site. There are several filters in place like job category, location, salary etc. which can be put to good use in these recession times.

Searchtastic is yet another search tool on Twitter which is quite new and allows users to search deep into the archives of the website. Only one thing though, the tool is limited by Twitter API and hence all the tweets cannot be indexed.

Yet another of the search tools is TweepSearch which is quite similar to Areaface but does not connect to like-minded Twitters through tweets but instead searches the bios of these users thus providing better results.

These lesser known search tools of Twitter are actually quite interesting and exciting for the avid Twitter.

Popularity: 1% [?]

AllThingsD and Reuters reported on 9th of October that Twitter has once again started independent discussions with both Google and Microsoft about a possible integration. These talks have taken place before too without any successful outcome by which the companies will be able to license a full feed from the blogging service which can then undergo integration into the results obtained from the competing search engines.

Both Microsoft Bing and Google had earlier expressed and indicated their interest in ‘real time search’ and reported that they soon intend to make it a part of their business agenda and these talks with Twitter can only add to accelerate those efforts. If you remember, Bing had earlier added ‘Twitter Smart Answers’ to its webpage. Both the companies also have third party tools to add the results of Twitter on their respective homepages.

And as we already know, Google has recently added new options to its Search tool by which users can filter results from the past hour. Google’s Larry Page also commented recently about how important ‘real time search’ has become to all web users.

If these search integration talks between Twitter, Google and Bing come through successful, it could spell disaster for the massive amount of other real-time engines out there which primarily rely on Twitter for all the news feeds, search results and other content. In my opinion, there are about twelve or more search engines whose business could be affected severely to the point of closing down if the deal comes through. Collecta is a website which may not get so affected as it does not rely entirely on Twitter API but all other search engines may have to come up with something new and creative to survive in this community.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The latest in the talk is nothing but the collaboration of the real time search along with Google Hot trends, brought out by Twitter bringing smile to many faces. Google is taking the real advantage and exposure by taking it to the latest information page, the hot trends where it is sure to be the first shot for many people to hit their eyes at one stretch. This would be happening with the regular results on searching online with Google.

You might be very curious to know when will this be starting up and there is nothing to be worried or waiting for as it will all commence at 3:45 Pacific time today. It would vividly be appearing for those who are searching on hot topics or the popular ones and you can simply find the OneBox at the bottom of the result page. It will be appearing just above the related search options which you usually find at the top.

The director of the management of the product related to the consumer search properties, RJ Pittman at Google today explained it as, “The idea behind the OneBox is to not only provide you with search results as you’d want but also extra meta data on how popular the search is and whether it has peaked in interest, plus the number of sites that are creating chatter and buzz about this particular topic or person, to give a relative hotness rating as well.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Twitter recently upgraded the features of CrowdEye, its recently launched real-time search engine. And I must say the whole look reminds me too much of Google Search. The latest additions and features include a customizable home page which is strikingly similar to iGoogle, PageRank-like measurement system and the ability to do Site: searches as in Google.

It is now possible for CrowdEye Twitter users to custom design their home page with their favorite sites, colors and images. The other thing you can save to your home page is your favorite search queries from CrowdEye. This will be an excellent online advertisement platform for those who are interested in monitoring tweets and sharing information about products, companies and so forth.

Ken Moss who is the co-founder of CrowdEye said that CrowdEye Rank was an inspiration from Google’s ranking system. The function of this ranking system is to add relevance to the search results and is heavily dependent on the number of followers a user has. Some of the top users according to this new system are Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears.

The site: search feature was surprisingly not mentioned in the official release from the company but is very much a part of the new look. With this innovative tool, you can search information, content or material that is related to specific domains and the results will be displayed as new and top links or tweets. Yet another upgrade from CrowdEye is the deeper integration of ‘retweet’ and ‘follow’ functions through out the website.

Even though the features and upgrades are quite similar to Google, they are still substantial and useful to fellow Twitters and can only add to the magnitude and reputation of CrowdEye and keyword monitoring ability on Twitter.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Twitter’s new real time search engine called CrowdEye, launched earlier this year has made moves to upgrade its features with plenty of new implementation that will bring to your mind Google. Among the services provided is a new Page rank measurement method, a custom made home page something that resembles iGoogle, and also the capability to search in the manner you would do so in Google like site: search

If you look at each feature in detail, CrowdEye allows you to customize their homepage with contents about their most important sites. It is your choice if you want to show tweets about some particularly interesting article you read somewhere you could do so. This provides an excellent platform for users who want to manage their own search page by giving in details about certain keywords or bulletins.

CrowdEye’s Co-founder, Ken Moss also made an announcement regarding its way of implementing Google’s Page Rank system. This system of ranking is of great relevance with respect to Twitter’s influence of accounts here. For instance the ranking system depends heavily on the number of followers that a particular user has whether they are top users or not.

They have also included a new operator called the Site: searches which are considered as a monitor tool at present though the announcements are to come soon. You can search for a specific content in connection with a domain using this particular operator. All the top links and tweets available for that particular domain will be put forward.

Another upgrade feature that is being added include the position of screen shots being added which is a combination of Twitter related functions like retweet, follow etc that is implemented throughout. This set of upgrades proves the position of CrowdEye to monitor Twitter and get all the details on their search page and this is indeed remarkable.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Trust Google to come up with really spectacular and exciting stuff each time. Right from its days of Google Search, every single application at Google has been revolutionary. Google, the original search giant decided to do something better in what it is best known for - Search. So what can be “Better than the Best?” The answer came in the form of Google Caffeine. Google Caffeine is available at this URL, for you all to try out.

With the growth in competition for search engines (Bing) Google’s new strategy was to better its search engine. Google Caffeine was the result of that. Google defines this project as “A Next-Generation Architecture for Google’s Web Search” on their blog on 10th august 2009.

As the Google blog puts it:

To build a great web search engine, you need to:

• Crawl a large chunk of the web.
• Index the resulting pages and compute how reputable those pages are.
• Rank and return the most relevant pages for users’ queries as quickly as possible.

Although looking at this statement you might wonder, whats so different from the earlier Google Search we had? The answer is ‘Much Much More’.

Google Search has been recently challenged on four things by competitors Microsoft’s Bing, Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook:

1. Real Time Search.
2. Microsoft’s Bing proving to be something of almost an equal level to Google Search.
3. Partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft on Search.
4. Facebook’s interest in Real Time Search.

Google Caffeine is an attempt in the right direction by Google to answer to these challenges.

But the prime question about Google Caffeine is… Is it Better than the earlier search?

Before I answer that. Lets take a look at the points which make the Current Google Search great.

1. Accuracy - This was the most brilliant thing about Google. Even when it indexed only a few thousand or even million pages, its search results were accurate and obviously much better than the search results given by the search engines of those times.
2. Speed - With every result, Google showed you the time it had taken to come up with it. Now that was something really cool. There was absolutely no need for Google to display that, as people did not have anything to do with it. But this was a brilliant strategy on Google’s part, when initially it was trying to make its mark as a search engine. Speed impresses people when they are trying something like search and the when they saw the total time taken, it only added to the confidence people were starting to have in Google.
3. Total Web Pages Indexed - More the number of web pages indexed, more are the number of web pages returned for a particular query. And more is the number of web pages returned, easy it is for the user to find what he is looking for. And the quicker he finds out, the more satisfied he leaves from Google and more are his chances to come back to Google to search something else. Google initially indexed few thousands of pages, something which has grown phenomenally in the past years with Google now indexing more than 8 Billion Web Pages. No other website comes in comparison to the number of web pages indexed by Google.

But if there was one thing which Google didn’t address (it would be wrong to say that they failed in this) was real time search. This is what Twitter has brought up. With real time results Twitter is best for searching the current events or breaking news. Google quickly added that feature in their web results to come up with something like this:

So lets take a look at the new Google Search Engine and compare it with the current one in terms of:

1. Total web pages indexed
2. Speed
3. Accuracy
4. Real time?

1. Total Web Pages Indexed:

So I entered a simple search query : India

And this was the output

Google Caffeine Current Google

Clearly The newer Google has indexed lots more pages than the Current Google and that’s evident from the fact that its returned much much more number of results.

I went ahead and entered a complex search query: “most number of tweets on twitter”

Google Caffeine returned : 10,800,000
Current Google returned : 21,300,000

Wow, that’s reverse now! But considering this is still in beta and the Google searches for most of my test queries resulted in Google Caffeine emitting more results, I guess this should be OK.

2. Speed:

Again a simple query “Indian Cricket Council” gave me more number of results. But look at this!!!

Google Caffeine Current Google

The current Google takes 0.32 seconds to return the results and the new Google is 0.16 seconds, thats like double!!!

WoW!!

Now this is change, although I am sure it is going to be the least noticed, is the one of the best things about the new Google.

Ok, so now I entered a complex query : “who will win the ashes?”

Google Caffeine : 0.22 seconds
Current Google : 0.25 seconds

There you go, the time difference did reduce over there. It also did for some more complex queries, but again a great update in this new Google.

3. Accuracy:

Hmmm! So how do you test the accuracy of something, which is known for its accuracy.

Simple search results like “India” or even “Twitter” did not reveal much although I did find out that there is a slight toggling in the search results for “Google News” results, “Google Pictures” results and “You Tube” results.

Nothing great!!!

So I entered a complex term like “what is the future of search”

Again, although the number of web pages returned and the time taken were impressive enough with Caffeine, I didnt find much difference in the output of results.

Simply toggling of the web pages is what I would call it.

Like for example with the above search query

As the first result :

Google Caffiene had :
Official Google Blog: The future of search

10 Sep 2008 … One answer is clear: search engines of the future will be better in part because they will understand more about you, the individual user. …
googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-of-search.html - Cached - Similar -

Current Google had :
Future Search - The Method - What is Future Search?

Future search is a PLANNING MEETING that helps people transform their capability for action very quickly. The meeting is task-focused. …
www.futuresearch.net/method/whatis/index.cfm - Cached - Similar -

This same result is found in the Google sandbox as the second result

Future Search - The Method - What is Future Search?

Future search is a PLANNING MEETING that helps people transform their capability for action very quickly. The meeting is task-focused. …
www.futuresearch.net/method/whatis/index.cfm - Cached - Similar -

Again more complex queries did not reveal much change and looks like there is no significant change when it comes to altering of web pages in the results.

Maybe being in the beta stage, probably this feature is not implemented to the fullest. May be?

4. Real Time:

Real time is the current hot topic among internet users. Twitter started all this. With a simple question “What are you doing?” Twitter single handedly put real time search on the map when it started indexing its tweets.

Almost immediately Google put an “Show Options” link on its search result page, giving the users option to look at queries that were old by some hours, days or months.

But when talking about Google Caffeine you can see the “Real Time” results embedded into the heart of the algorithm.

Clearly Google Caffeine is much better than the current Google Search when it comes to displaying real time results like breaking news and current event.

A good thing in the right direction makes this new tweak victorious in Google Caffeine.

Here is a quick output of the above comparisons :

Comparison:

1. Total web pages indexed
Winner: Google Caffeine

2. Speed
Winner: Google Caffeine

3. Accuracy
Winner: Not much difference, but still expecting the obvious change from Google Caffeine

4. Real time?
Winner: Google Caffeine

Conclusion:

So overall, Google Caffeine is a much better product than the current Google Search. Keeping the latest trends in internet and competition in mind, Google has come up with a better product and its certainly posing as a challenge to Bing, Twitter and Facebook.

More Resources on Google Caffeine:

1. Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index
2. Google Caffeine Test Suggests Too Much Emphasis on Real-Time Indexing
3. Is Google Caffeine Faster?
4. Google Caffeine Search Index & Algorithm Update
5. Google Building Bing-Killer Search Engine
6. Google Caffeine: A Detailed Test of the New Google
7. Google’s Caffeine May Cause Corporate Jitters
8. More info on the Caffeine Update
9. Google Caffeine Wakes Me Up
10. Google Caffeine: A Comprehensive Analysis

Popularity: 5% [?]

Twitter has become a mass revolution now and you find out endless stories on how the entire population including medias, blogs etc are depending on Twitter to improve their business by finding their customers through this way. Twitter Search is something which many of the business owners have found out to directly get in touch with the customers and also to listen to their reviews locally. On the other hand, Twitter for a long time did not open about this aspect letting the people get into what they want from this huge entity.

Now, it does not remain the same as Twitter has noticed its growing wings and how people have become dependents on it to reach out to people. With this, today they did launch their very first contribution to the business users named the Twitter 101 for Business: A Special Guide

Twitter 101 is marvellous and has been finished up in the best possible way. It has a clear cut information on how to open and account taking you through each step in detail. Among the best practices list, there are 10 major companies introduced in the case study details also including tips and tricks for the owners.

This guide is simply what the people where looking out for as they had already started depending on Twitter for their business and all that they needed was just a push up and a better idea of how it must be done. Twitter 101 has everything on how Twitter must be used for business apart from why you must be using Twitter.

“You don’t have to run a bike shop or a relatively small company to get good stuff out of Twitter. Businesses of all kinds, including major brands, increasingly find that listening and engaging on the service lead to happier customers, passionate advocates, key product improvements and, in many cases, more sales.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Twitter has been planning things in a pretty nice way and along with this certain documental evidences also reveals that it is the company focusing onto pure success. They are clear about the way they have been travelling and at the same they are pretty eager, curious and even ambitious of what comes over in the future.

Apart from this there are more details which are floating about of the relationship of Twitter with other big companies including Google, Microsoft and hopefully Yahoo too. When all these discussions and merging is taking place, the company itself is afraid of the competition and also whether they would destroy the growth of Twitter along the path.

Tech Crunch brought about the documents which resulted up in the spread of the great news of the delicate dance of Twitter with the other giants. When the real hot question that comes out is whether it is good to open up the documents which are to be kept confidential. It still remains to be so as the news has let out a huge buss.

The documents which were produced include that of the executive meetings conducted by Twitter during the month of February and June in the year 2009. Even though the sources say that the major issue of negotiation between the giants including Microsoft and Google was sensed out, there are even more things which can be sniffed over.

Apart from this entire boom coming up, Facebook has also shown its interest in merging up with this growing company. The discussion is on the go even though Facebook might turn out to be the perfect killer for Twitter.

Popularity: 2% [?]