Tech giant Yahoo is set to introduce a new feature in its search engine – semi-real-time search results. The news of this roll-out comes hot on the heels of Google’s similar feature launch earlier this week.
Yahoo’s Take on Real-Time Search
Yahoo’s real-time search will not entirely mirror the functionality that Google provides. The primary reason behind this is the absence of access to Twitter’s firehose, a data stream that Google has exclusive access to due to a recent agreement between the two companies.
Lacking this access, Yahoo has chosen to rely on its proprietary algorithms to source recent tweets and display them at the bottom of search results.
Focus on Twitter Content
While Google’s real-time search encompasses tweets, Facebook updates, and a myriad of other sources, Yahoo has decided to focus solely on tweets for now. The company recently incorporated a feature that displays Twitter results as an option for news-related searches.
This feature is hosted on a new user interface which offers a tab-based system to switch between news, photos, videos, and Twitter results.
Real-Time or Not?
However, the real-time nature of Yahoo’s search results is up for debate due to the static nature of the Twitter results. Unlike Google’s real-time feature, which streams results live as they are posted, Yahoo’s results remain fixed. This discrepancy is due to Yahoo’s lack of access to Twitter’s Firehose data.
The Microsoft Story
Microsoft, in the meantime, has managed to broker deals with Facebook and Twitter around the same time as Google’s Twitter agreement. Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, does provide a Twitter search feature.
However, this feature remains separate from the main Bing search engine and doesn’t amalgamate real-time results into the search engine results pages (SERPs) as Google does.
Comparison with Yahoo
Bing does offer real-time Twitter updates for some popular searches, but these are hardly in real-time due to their static nature. This feature is more reminiscent of what Yahoo is doing now.
Despite these limitations, Microsoft continues to expand its real-time search capabilities, and more updates are expected to roll out soon. As for Yahoo, its search feature is expected to be superseded by Bing’s functionality soon, following the recent finalization of the Yahoo-Microsoft deal.
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