The real-time search wars are getting bigger each day –

Twitter is reportedly in separate negotiations with both Google and Microsoft to supply their social network’s huge amount of real-time tweet data to the two big search engines.

Sources state that the deals would include a license of Twitter’s complete tweet feed and using it for real-time search results in the Bing and Google search engines. The deals could involve millions of dollars in revenue for Twitter.

Twitter has a large and possibly lucrative collection of fresh, user-generated data that is the driving force behind real-time search results. The Twitter social network collects this constant stream of new information from its 54 million monthly users in the form of tweets.

Sources say the deals would be nonexclusive, since Twitter’s management wants to stay independent in the escalating search engine struggle between Google and Bing.

Source: Seattle PI

The rise of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, with their constant streams of fresh user updates have given rise to a new type of web search engine that is challenging Google’s dominance in the area of internet search – the real-time search engine.

According to a recent Wired.com article, the internet is changing rapidly thanks to the popularity of social networks and social media.

People are increasingly searching the web for fresh, up-to-the-minute information on timely topics like celebrity gossip, current news events, profile updates from family and friends, current political events ( ex. Iranian election protests ). Web metrics show that searches for these types of subjects is rising.

It is commonly called the “real-time” web.

The real-time web is shaking up the internet as we have experienced it in the past, and it’s a trend that Google needs to take seriously if it wants to compete in this new search engine arena.

For over a decade, Google has indexed the internet by determining which site had credibility. Google measures the popularity of sites in part by measuring the links that point to them, a big part in Google’s PageRank measurement.

Google checks to see whether a site grew in popularity naturally, which tends to show credibility. However, if a site gets a lot of inbound links overnight, it’s could be due to link spamming, a practice that is frowned upon by the Google search algorithm.

In contrast, real-time web search works the opposite. Real-time search is about “trending topics” and current news items — which can create a huge number of inbound links and comments in minutes. Real-time search engines can’t wait days to determine what is the most popular real-time news source or blog post.

People who search the real-time web want to know the source of trending topics immediately.

Real-time search engines like OneRiot, Tweetmeme, CrowdEye, Topsy, Scoopler, and Collecta are in the process of redefining what the rules that determine what makes a current piece of information on the web relevant.

The majority of these up and coming real-time search engines use Twitter data to drive their search results. Whenever an explosion of Twitter tweets on a particular topic or site links emerge, it’s considered a “signaling event” for trending topics on real-time search engines.

Collecta’s CTO Jack Moffitt says: “We want to be limited only by the speed of light.”

Search results on the real-time web is vastly different from those on a typical search engine. If you search for a celebrity on a traditional engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing, the majority of the search results stay constant from day to day.

Rankings change slowly on a traditional web search. However, real-time search engines serve fresh results by the minute.

Developers of real-time search engines say that their goal isn’t to answer questions like Google, Yahoo and Bing do, but rather to give people a fresh snapshot of current web buzz.

In a nutshell, Google is still top dog when it comes to topical research, but a new group of real-time search engines are better equipped to give you a front row seat at the global water cooler.

Source: Wired.com

The latest search engine statistics from StatCounter show Microsoft’s Bing search engine losing US market share to Google search. Bing dropped 1.17 percent to 8.47 percent in September from a peak 9.64 percent share that Bing had in August.

However, Google’s search engine market share in the US rose from 77.83 percent in August to 80.12 percent in September.

Bing’ search drop is interesting in light of the search engine’s steadily climbing performance since it launched along with the new features Bing added to internet search like indexed Twitter tweets.

Google recently announced nine new search options to help users find what they are searching for, including: searching fresh information by past hour, date range, commercial sites, visited and not yet visited sites, books search, blog search and news search options.

Source: Top News.

Twitter and Facebook, two of the web’s top social networks, are aiming to be the number one player in real-time search.

About a year ago, Twitter acquired real-time search engine Summize, a search engine that indexes tweets. Shortly after the Summize acquisition Twitter rolled out Twitter Search and the era of real-time search started.

Since then, the area of real-time search has taken off. Twitter Search and Twitter’s trending topics have become a mainstay of Twitter’s microblogging platform and has also become one of the top searches for monitoring breaking and current news stories.

For a year, Twitter had no big rivals in the real-time search arenea. However, that all changed overnight when Facebook took over FriendFeed and rolled out their real-time search engine last week. Facebook’s real-time search can search status updates on user profiles; track pictures, personal notes, online videos etc.

Will Facebook’s acquisition moves and larger membership numbers and make Twitter’s real-time search irrelevant or will Twitter find a way to trump Facebook’s moves into the Twitter territory?

Twitter’s real-time search has only been in use for a year. However, it is positioned as the current leader in real-time search. When you want to find out what people are saying about current news stories you go to Twitter.

According to Mashable.com, Twitter has 3 main advantages over Facebook:

1] First mover advantage.

2] More experience with real-time search.

3] An open platform.

Even though Facebook’s real-time search is only a week old, their new real-time search can search a lot more than just status updates. Facebook’s real-time search has access to over 250 million users, the world’s largest social network can search photos, popular links, current events, applications and more.

Mashable.com notes some advantages that Facebook’s search has over Twitter search:

1] More users.

2] A more diverse search tool.

3] Talent and real-time search technology acquired from FriendFeed.

Either social network could win the real-time search race or Google could launch a powerful real-time search engine and wipe out both Facebook and Twitter from the real-time search market.

Source: Mashable

According to a recent CNN article, people who search online for phrases like “song lyrics” or “free” are engaging in risky search engine behavior. Along with “free music downloads”, these search terms put 20 percent of search engine users in danger of landing on sites that push malicious software, known as “malware.”

A research report by antivirus software company McAfee has found the most dangerous search engine terms that can land people on pages with a high likelihood of virus and malware attacks.

The McAfee study looked at 2,600 popular keywords used on the Google, Yahoo, Live, AOL and Ask search engines. The study then analyzed approximately 413,000 Web pages that rank for those search terms.

Categories that had the highest risk of contaminating your PC with viruses and malware are: screen savers, free games, work from home, Olympics, videos, celebrities, music and news.

The riskiest phrases were: word unscrambler, lyrics, myspace, free music downloads, phelps, game cheats, printable fill-in puzzles, free ringtones and solitaire.

The study also showed how cyber criminals are increasing in sophistication and how antivirus software often lags behind the latest developments by cyber criminals.

Despite the growing virus and malware risks, McAfee CEO David DeWalt doesn’t believe there will be a “cyber Armageddon” that will cause worldwide destruction of servers, computers and web infrastructure.

However, he did say that “In the past year, we’ve seen a pretty dramatic shift in what we call malware.”

DeWalt further noted that: “It went from a hacker in a basement, to organized cybercrime to now, literally, terrorism and other forms of organized geopolitical attacks.”

Source: CNN.com

Topsy is a new social network search engine that searches conversations from online web 2.0 communities and returns search results based on the timely topical “chatter” that occurs on those communities every minute.

Some of the social networks and online communities that Topsy takes its search results from are Twitter, blogs, Flickr, Digg, Yelp, Identica as well as a host of other social networks and web 2.0 sites.

According to the Topsy “about us” page: “People use these communities to share reviews, opinions, messages, comments and discussions about things. Topsy indexes those things. Topsy indexes what people are talking about.”

The Topsy.com search works in real-time, unlike most other search engines. Topsy’s search engine results are timely and current, because they are pulled from what people are talking about right now, this week or over the past month.

Topsy can help you get up-to-the minute search results for any topic you wish, including people, celebrity gossip, news etc.

You can use the Topsy real-time search engine for yourself @ Topsy.com

There is not doubt that the anticipated launch of the WolframAlpha search engine has created quite a buzz in the media, but we will have to wait and see if the new search engine lives up to the hype.

The WolframAlpha search engine is the brain child of Dr. Stephen Wolfram, an award winning physicist.

The new search technology used by WolframAlpha will reportedly understand and respond to ordinary language the way people do.

Although the WolframAlpha search engine is new it is creating quite a bit of interest among technology junkies and search engine users. Even though it has yet to launch officially, the new search engine is being compared to the likes of Google and being hailed as a watershed moment in the advancement of technology, research and internet search.

Nova Spivack, an internet and computer professional, said in a recent UK Independent article: “It is really impressive and significant. In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.”

According to the Independent article:

“Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as ‘how high is Mount Everest?’, but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.”

According to its inventor Dr. Stephen Wolfram, the real power and innovation behind the Wolfram Alpha search is its ability to work things out on the fly, like demographic, mathematical or statistical comparisons.

More from the Independent article:

“If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in “10 flips for four heads” and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.”

The WolframAlpha search engine is based on Dr. Wolfram’s Mathematica software, a standard tool used by scientists for computing complex math problems.

The search engine will be free to use and works by using the knowledge on the internet, as well as private databases. Dr Wolfram says that he expects it will take around 1,000 people to keep its search databases updated with the newest information.

Dr. Wolfram also stated in the Independent article that it is not the search engine’s purpose to store information on everyday people, although he is aware that others might use the technology to do this.

Wolfram Alpha was created with professionals and academics in mind, so its ability to understand popular culture searches is relatively poor.

In addition, Dr. Wolfram does not rule out working with search giants like Google or Wikipedia down the road.

Source: The UK Independent.

SearchMe.com is a new visual search engine that returns a visual display of search engine results for users that are grouped by category.

The Search Me search engine is based around categories and visual presentation, so that users can view web pages before they visit them.

Topic categories are displayed that relate to your query as you type. Search Me users can see pictures of web pages that match their search.

Users can view relevant pages quickly to find the right pages before they click through.

You can visit the Search Me web search engine @ Search Me.

CNet News is reporting that some ex Google employees are working on a new social search engine.

The site is called Mechanical Zoo and is scheduled for a beta launch in May.

Mechanical Zoo is aiming to be an application ( rather than a regular web site ) that will allow people to search the knowledge in their social circle to find useful personal information and recommendations. Mechanical Zoo currently has 100 “alpha” users testing the search. The site will be a Yahoo Answers-type service, with more built-in knowledge about a person’s tastes and interests.

Mechanical Zoo cofounder Max Ventilla, a former business development manager at Google, says “We’ve developed an online social structure that lets users reach out to people they already know” for answers.”

Source: News.com

Inc.com has published an interesting article on some search engine startups that want to take on Yahoo and Google for a share of the search engine market. Powerset.com and Hakia.com are two such startups looking for a better way to search the web.

Both Powerset and Hakia are using natural language technology to build a better search engine and each have raised millions of dollars to do so. Powerset is expected to go live later in the year and Hakia already has a beta version online.

Then there are the people powered search engines like the ChaCha.com search engine that pays workers to find information for you. Wikipedia is expected to launch a people / social search engine sometime in the future.

Specialty search engines like the real estate search engine at Zillow.com try to fill a niche search and don’t try to be all things to all people.

The search engine future is robust and wide open. The best search engines will grow and web searchers will benefit from all the competition.

Source: Search for Tomorrow