It’s an interesting question – how exactly would you want to see tweets in your Google and Bing search results? And it’s an important question, as searches are critical bases for discovering information and huge drivers of traffic.
[tweetmeme source=”bhc3″]
Tweets are different from web pages. They are more ephemeral, but also much more current. They’re short nature means we can consume them much more quickly than fuller web pages. In many ways, their brevity reduces their “burden of interestingness”. Read, move on. Read, move on. Read, move on.
Tweets are small nuggets of insight, and pointers to good content. Web pages are the foundational information components. The value of the two digital forms is different. Thus, it makes sense to consider options for presenting these different types of information to people.
Three different designs for presenting tweets in Google and Bing search results come to mind:
Separate tweets-only search page
Tweets displayed in a box on the same page with web pages
Tweets integrated into the overall search results
Let’s take a look at the options. For added context, I’ve included appropriate musical selections.
At the bottom of this post, I’ve set up a poll asking which approach you’d prefer.
This is the Bing way. A separate URL for tweets. It’s an acknowledgment that tweets really are different from web pages. The graphic below conceptualizes this approach, with a search on ‘Madrid’:
The graphic above puts tweets searches more in line with overall searches. Right now Bing has no link to tweet searches on its home page. You just have to know the URL exists. Of course, the Microsoft Bing team is working on incorporating the firehose into its search experience, so that may change.
Positives
Dedicated page allows for much more creativity with presenting tweets, as Bing has shown
Visible link/tab keeps tweet searches more in-the-flow of searchers’ actions
Users could easily toggle between the tabs for different types of information
Minimizes risk of disruption to current “golden egg” of web searches
Negatives
Forces an extra step to see potentially relevant information – click the tweets tab
Somewhat diminishes the awareness of tweets’ real-time, up-to-date nature by using same tab structure applied to more static web pages
The presentation of real-time tweets on the same page is something Google is experimenting with currently. The philosophy here is that you’re looking for multiple types of information in a search. Google already displays web page links, images, YouTube videos, maps, PDFs and other types of content. Tweets are just another type of content.
Something I’d like to see is a separate box of the tweets on the search results page, as shown below:
This design effectively distinguishes tweets from other types of content, while preserving the “all information on one page” philosophy. This is important for Google and Bing advertising, making the search results page even more engaging.
Open question: what’s better for ad click volumes? Multiple pages of different content (e.g. separate tabs described previously)? Or a single page with more engaging content?
Aside from the information aspect of tweets, there is also a people aspect. Tweets are as much about the person as they are the content. The separate presentation of tweets distinguishes them from web pages, PDFs, videos and the like.
Positives
Relevant, up-to-date content improves value of searches
In-the-flow of existing search behavior
Real-time nature is engaging
Find people as well as content
Negatives
Smaller space constrains presentation options
Potential for a too-crowded visual presentation
Because of the volume of searches run through Google and Bing, there will be a premium on ensuring the quality of the tweets presented. This is important regardless, but even more so here with the number of times people will see the tweets. See How Should Tweets Be Ranked in Search Engine Results? for thoughts on how to do this.
There is a third design option. Why not put the tweets right in the mix of overall search results? Treat them less as exotic new forms of content, and more as just another type for searchers to click on. The graphic below conceptualizes this:
A tweet is just another URL that can point searchers to relevant content. The challenge is that Google and Bing need to alter their ranking algorithms to allow tweets to be served up high in search results. Something like a pagerank for the twitter account itself. If it has relevant content and a high “Twitter pagerank”, it gets served up higher in the search results.
Positives
Searchers get tweets in a highly familiar way
Minimizes risk of disruption to current “golden egg” of web searches
Negatives
Undermines the fresh, up-to-date nature of tweets
Will limit presentation of relevant tweets due to inadequate “Twitter pagerank”
Reduces the people aspect of the tweets
Lack of real-time flow diminishes engagement of the results page
Of course, tweets are served up in search results today. But that generally happens with very specific multi-word searches that match the tweet, or including the word “twitter” in the search. The design above brings tweets more fully into the pantheon of content, displaying them highly in search results for basic keywords.
I imagine smart folks can come up with other designs for displaying tweets. Leave a comment on these three or any other designs you think might be interesting.
Also, take a second and vote in the poll below. I’m curious what people think about the different possibilities for displaying tweets.
Want to know if you’re truly in the technology elite? Let Google tell you!
Try this:
Go to Google
Type in your name and the word ‘twitter’ (e.g. hutch carpenter twitter)
Look at the results
If you see real-time search results at the top of the page, congratulations! You’re a VIP! If not, well, sorry about that.
As was well covered a few months back, Google has made a deal with Twitter to get the real-time firehose of tweets. The actual rollout of tweets in search by Google is still a work in progress.
But I stumbled across this interesting test of Tech Worthiness in doing research for a different blog post. Some searches result in a display of real-time tweets at the top of the page. What’s interesting is who gets this treatment.
The graphic below shows the Google search results for six different people, along with the word “twitter”:
At the top, you can see four people who are elite. They have real-time tweet searches right at the top of the search results:
Louis Gray – uber chronicler of Silicon Valley and Web 2.0
Charlene Li – ex-Forrester analyst, co-author of Groundswell, founder of Altimeter Group
Jeff Bezos is interesting. He does have a twitter account, but they’re all protected tweets.
At the bottom, you see a couple of the non-elite in the tech world. Ashton Kutcher, the first man to the moon…er…to reach 1 million followers on Twitter does not get the real-time tweet treatment from Google.
And alas, I am not part of the tech elite either.
So there you have it. Google has provided a handy test to see if you’re part of the Tech Elite. Go see how you’re doing.
UPDATES
Several people reported to me on Twitter that they could indeed see my real-time tweets on Google using ‘bhc3 twitter’. Now I had tried that last night and this morning, got nothing. Now they’re showing up, as you can see in the picture below, taken from my iPhone:
When I ran the “hutch carpenter” tweet search on Google last night, there were no results. But on Twitter search, there were a few results.
Ashton Kutcher is frequently mentioned on Twitter, but he doesn’t show up on Google real-time tweet searches. His handle, @aplusk, is also mentioned frequently. Google tweet searches on aplusk were not bringing up his real-time tweets last night. But they are this morning.
A search on ‘Chris Messina’ yields @chrismessina in the real-time tweet search results. So Google does some association there between the two terms.
And there remain people who get no results, no matter what. So the exact nature of this real-time search is a bit murky.
Yet it still appears that the known “tech elite” show up readily.
Via Tweet Cloud, here’s what I’ve been tweeting about the past year:
According to Tweet Cloud, these are my most frequently used words:
innovation
blog
post
social
thanks
reading
enterprise
spigit
friendfeed
google
people
time
cool
tweet
media
tweets
software
business
ideas
love
nice
hamel
yeah
search
facebook
idea
companies
management
company
world
Surprises? Google coming in at #10. I love Google, but surprised I’ve mentioned them that much. And the amount of “positivity” in my tweets: “thanks”, “nice”, “cool”, “love”. You won’t see “hate” making the top 30.
Check yours out at Cloud Tweet. Heads up – it will automatically post a link to your tweet cloud on your Twitter account. This bugs many people who do not like the automatic nature of tweets on their behalf.
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