Twitter and Yandex link up to offer real-time tweet search

Post by Tom Blackburn on 21st February 2012
 in 3G, Search, Social media, Twitter

In a move which acknowledges Twitter's growing importance as a source of real-time information, the microblogging site has signed a second deal with a major search engine which will see it instantly index users' tweets.

When it is finalised, it will make Yandex, the top search engine in Russia where it has 60 per cent of the market, only the second one to include tweets among its search rankings.

Google pulled the plug on a similar offering when it launched its own social media channel, Google+, last year, leaving Microsoft's Bing as the only search engine which ranks tweets in real time.

In a phone call with news agency Reuters, Twitter director of business development, April Underwood, said the company "wanted to make sure that Twitter content can be where Twitter users are already going".

A statement from Yandex's blog search manager, Anton Pavlov, said the intention was to help the company enhance its search results, and added: "People share news, exchange opinions and discuss all sorts of matters in real time all the time".

Statistics suggest that both Yandex and Bing have about three per cent of the global internet search market.