Take The Poll: Is Twitter Your Search Engine Alternative?

Do you Twitter it rather than Google it? I’m running a poll to try and understand how Twitter may be changing search habits. Please participate! More and more people have been talking and writing about how they are turning to Twitter to get answers. Search engines like Google have, of course, long been the dominant […]

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Do you Twitter it rather than Google it? I’m running a poll to try and understand how Twitter may be changing search habits. Please participate!

More and more people have been talking and writing about how they are turning to Twitter to get answers. Search engines like Google have, of course, long been the dominant way people get answers on the web. Alternative success stories to the normal “crawl the web approach,” such as Yahoo Answers, certainly exist. But Twitter is somewhat unique. It didn’t set out to be a search engine alternative, but it might be becoming one.

My survey below (or available here in case it doesn’t load properly below for some reason) is an initial stab to measure what might be going on. It’s short, and I hope you’ll take part. In a few days, I’ll publish all the results for everyone.

Postscript: Back last year, Search Engine Watch covered Twitter as a search alternative, and things have only ramped up since then. In the past few days, AdAge now has a good article on the growing trend of viewing Twitter as a search engines. TechCrunch has comments about that to, Techmeme is full of reaction and John Battelle has an excellent look at how Twitter is a database of answers similar to YouTube (and the implications that means for search). That’s bang on target — and I have a lot more to say on it myself. But I’d decided it would be fun to get a survey of what people are doing on Twitter to go along with it. So far, the responses are fascinating. Please spread the word.

POLL’S NOW CLOSED. THANKS EVERYONE WHO RESPONDED.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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