Twitter Search vs. Google Search – How They Differ
In Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods, Shel Israel talks about three ways that Twitter Search is different than Google Search. The other two had occurred to me already, but the first one he mentions I had not thought of on my own. You can guess the other two in the comments. This post talks about finding recent results vs. most visited results.
When one does a search in Google, the most visited posts come up. For example, let’s say we search for “insurance new jersey.” When I search in Google, here’s what I get (under sponsored links and local links):
When I looked this up two days later in Google, I got pretty much the same results. These may not be the most relevant results.
In Twitter, however, you get the most recent. So let’s go back to our example of “insurance new jersey.” Here’s what I get on Friday, April 2, 2010:
And here’s what I get on Sunday, April 4, 2010:
Wednesday, April 7, 2010:
Different, huh? How can this relate to your business? From the research side, if the Google results are just what you need, then you found what you need right away.
But say you want to find others who are conversing about insurance in New Jersey. Twitter may be a better approach. Also, Twitter is showing you what is going on *right now* instead of a cumulative response over time. If there is a sudden flood and you want to find out who is talking about insurance coverage, Twitter would have those results right away. The example Shel Israel gives in his book Twitterville is his own book – when he searches for his name, he gets a popular blog he wrote back in 2004 as the top result. But when he searches on Twitter, he gets most recently discussed tweets, which may be his newest book.
Can you guess the other two ways that Twitter search differs from Google search? I will put the answer in the comments later this week. Also, if you can come up with some good examples of terms (instead of “insurance new jersey” – something relevant to your business or nonprofit) that you might search for in Twitter vs. Google, please put those in the comments.
Can you guess the other two ways that Twitter search differs from Google search?
If you don’t delete the column (at least in TweetDeck) the search is there each time you log in.
.-= Ilana-Davita´s last blog ..Salmon and Fennel =-.
True for TweetDeck, although the answers are relevant to any Twitter search from any app.
BTW I still don’t understand how to formulate a Twitter search.
.-= Ilana-Davita´s last blog ..Salmon and Fennel =-.
“How to formulate a Twitter search” -
You go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in some keywords? Not so different than Google searches. You can do something similar in TweetDeck.
Can you give an example of what you would like to find?
Other ways Twitter search differs from Google search:
1) Google search can be gamed. User may get less relevant results. So far, Twitter search is harder to game by SEO manipulation.
2) Twitter lets you ask people you know about things they know. “While Google uses robotic spiders to crawl the Web and give you keyword results, a Twitter user can simply ask friends about products, services or anything else,” says Shel Israel in his book.
Thank you for your answers. For some reason I never got them in my mailbox.
.-= Ilana-Davita´s last blog ..Emails vs Facebook =-.
Glad you checked them out online!
Twitter search is outdated and full of irrelevant results. If i really need to search anything on twitter, all i do is search in google with query like “site:twitter.com keyword” rather than simple twitter search. I may not get realtime results though but way better and relevant. IMO.