December 10, 2009

More Tweets in Yahoo! Search Results

When we launched a Yahoo! News shortcut with Twitter content integration earlier this month, we said more was coming. Starting today, you will see recent tweets directly integrated on the Web search result page when you search for buzzy topics. How is this different from what we launched earlier? You can still see relevant tweets about the most popular topics in the news in the expanded Yahoo! News shortcut with Twitter which combines news articles, images, videos, and tweets. Now you can see tweets about some of the less popular buzzing topics directly in the search results, usually at the bottom of the page, and you may see those tweets less frequently.

What’s popular in search changes all day every day. Sometimes it is current events in the news, like “Norway lights,” the strange spiral lights seen over Norway earlier this week:

Twitter results for "Norway lights" in Yahoo! Search

Other times, a buzzy topic in search might not be in news headlines. For example, you might search for a popular products or shopping deals, such as searches for “Dell”:

Twitter results for "Dell" in Yahoo! Web Search

So how does this work? We continuously keep track of queries searched on Yahoo!, and when there is a spike in interest in a topic, our search algorithm selects relevant tweets to show on the search results page, either as a part of the Yahoo! News shortcut or in a Twitter section, like in the examples above. The age of the tweets will vary – some will be a minute old, while others may be hours old. Our goal is to feature interesting Twitter content that is relevant to your query and complements the other results you find on the search page.

By presenting the latest Twitter discussions about buzzing topics, we are bringing you a wider variety of voices on the Web. We are constantly trying to improve search to bring you better results. We hope you like this new experience, so please go to Yahoo! Search to try it out.

Ivan Davtchev and Shiv Ramamurthi

Yahoo! Search

Comments

  1. I have reading about Google and Yahoo both getting into realtime search. However, what I want to know is how you people are going to deal with lot of spam tweets which even go on to create trending topics.

  2. I think it’s pretty cool to offer this kind of services to the customer. Yeah, thanks, Yahoo.

  3. No doubt realtime search can be great for up to date information, although as Arkid say’s, dealing with spam is the main problem.

  4. Tweets in Yahoo Search results! this is very good news, we can check what world is saying about in real time.
    I wish search engines results in Tags also.

  5. so when Google decide to make bullshit, you do the same things some week after ? :/
    Outside geek and tech people, who have something to care about Twitter ? Not a lot of people … and you junk their results with tweets that redirect on some website (anyone can have the right and complete information inside a little tweet). Why not propose directly the website linking by the tweet ?

  6. How do you guys filter out rubbish tweets? Or do you let anything through on topic?

  7. @ Nor u wish search engines results in Tags also (i think i like it)

    so “twitter spam the results with tweets”

    big thanks, Yahoo.

  8. I like the idea of twitter results being listed via yahoo results but it does need a substantial level of filtering because i could see things easily start to get out of hand with twitter spam.

  9. What you guys at Yahoo are doing is great!

  10. I think the real-time search is fantastic but as the people before me have pointed out that spam is going to be a big problem. No matter how much wiser u make ur search algorithms it will still pull out the spam tweets. I think 4 it 2 b really successful u have to do years worth of testing.

  11. Yahoo keeps staying on the top, very soon i think they will run over Google.
    Nice efforts done by Yahoo team, keep it up.

  12. Trendy, spammy Twitter… Well, you can always revert back if it gets to be too much. At least Yahoo! is willing to try something that’s real-time, although there will be better tech debuting in 2010 that will surprise many.

  13. Twitter has become a great source of traffic as well as information.
    Internet Marketer are attempting to utilize this social site for SEO purposes.
    Hopefully this doesn’t decrease the value of twitter.

  14. This very good idea to display updated search results in real time. We are waiting for to see more what world is doing or searching at the same movement while searching through Yahoo

  15. This is very nice to watch scrolling updated results in real time on the same page. Thanks research team.

  16. I like it. Thank you for this feature!

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