Twitter Finally Begins Adding Search Relevancy Features

The Twitter Blog has a short blog post mentioning that they have added technology “to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful.” Clearly, this is Twitter’s first step in improving Twitter Search by adding relevancy and search quality factors to the search algorithm.

Currently, Twitter Search returns results based on keyword match and the most recent tweet. Trending Topics is the first of Twitter’s search areas to get the relevancy filter, to reduce the “noise” that Twitter Search has. We knew Twitter was working on adding relevancy factors with linkage data, and I assume this is the first signs of it. In the Twitter blog post, Twitter said it might be very noticeable right now, but they hope to improve it over time.

You can test it out for yourself at Twitter Search and clicking on one of the “trending topics.”

In other Twitter news, Twitter is experimenting with adding retweet buttons to some user accounts. There seems to be a lot more buzz around the “retweet” button then around the Twitter Search relevancy addition.