The Twitter Search Landscape

Twitter reports serving 19 billion searches per month, and that doesn’t even count Twitter-powered searches at the major search engines of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Where are all those searches happening? Who are the big players in Twitter search?

No one really knows so far, which makes life tough for search marketers trying to decide where to begin with this growing market. But a good starting point is always traffic. Those with the most traffic usually deserve the most attention from marketers.

So below, my top list of Twitter search services to watch, listed in order of what I guess are most likely to send traffic to web sites. For each, I list how the editorial results are ranked, where ads come from (if any) plus some additional information that may be relevant.

Guess? Yes, at the moment, that’s the best I can do. We just don’t have good third party metrics yet. Google is obvious. Tweets get displayed right within some “regular” search results. Bing is moving this way, as well. Yahoo’s supposed to do this, but things seem so confused over there that I’ve tucked them at the bottom of the list. Twitter’s own properties seem important to watch. After that, I’ve listed some popular Twitter clients that have good usage, followed by a few third-party Twitter search tools.

Be sure to also see the important companion piece to this article, The Twitter Search Revolution: Popular & Promoted Tweets Mature The Service. It explains more about how the Twitter search space is shifting significantly to provide better relevance ranking as well as the inclusion of ads. Things like “Promoted Tweets” and “Popular Tweets” and “pure” Twitter search are all explained in that article.

Google

• Editorial Results: Twitter mixed with other sources, ranked by time
• Ads: None, probably from Google AdWords in the future
• More Info: Real time results display within “regular” results for some searches. See Google Launches Real Time Search Results and All The Old Tweets Are Found: Google Launches Twitter Archive Search for more on how Google does Twitter searching.

Twitter.com

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time
• Ads: Up to 1 “Promoted” tweet
• More Info: FAQ: Promoted Tweets and FAQ: Promoted Tweets For Advertisers from Twitter’s help area have some additional information.

Twitter Search

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time, with up to 3 “Popular” tweets coming first
• Ads: None
• More Info: Twitter Quietly Rolls Out ‘Most Popular Tweets’ explains more about how Popular Tweets work.

Bing

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time. “Best Match” relevancy sorting an option.
• Ads: None
• More Info: Up Close With Bing’s Twitter Search Engine covers the dedicated Bing Twitter search engine, while Bing Testing Twitter In Search Results covers some more integrated testing currently happening.

TweetDeck

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time.
• Ads: None (coming from TweetUp in near future)
• More Info: A popular Twitter client. TweetDeck also has a “TweetDeck Recommends” column of tweets that shows by default. Unclear if these are editorial picks, paid ads or both.

Seesmic

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time.
• Ads: None (coming from TweetUp in near future)
• More Info: Makes a variety of popular Twitter clients on a range of platforms.

Tweetie

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time.
• Ads: None (probably from Twitter in future)
• More Info: Popular iPhone and desktop client recenly purchased by Twitter.

HootSuite

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time.
• Ads: None
• More Info: Popular Twitter client. HootSuite also has a “Featured Tweeps” column that shows by default, with no information on whether these are ads, editorial picks or both.

OneRiot

• Editorial Results: Twitter mixed with other sources, focus on showing recent top shared links
• Ads: Sold directly by OneRiot

Topsy

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by relevancy over past day, by default. “Featured Tweet,” an editorial pick, appears at top of list.
• Ads: None

Collecta

• Editorial Results: Twitter mixed with other sources, ranked by time
• Ads: None

CrowdEye

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, sorted by most relevant tweets over past three days (but still largely most recent tweets first)
• Ads: None

Yahoo

• Editorial Results: Pure Twitter, ranked by time
• Ads: From Yahoo
• More Info: Yahoo Brings ‘Real Time’ Updates To News Shortcut covers how they typically appear in a rudimentary and easy-to-miss display. Yahoo Adds Twitter To Search Results describes a more integated approach that I cannot currently get to trigger.