The news that Twitter had reached deals with both Google and Bing made pretty large waves in the social media marketing sphere, and understandably so. Google’s position, obviously, can’t be overstated, Bing is a quickly growing competitor in the field of search, and the value of Twitter has been stated ad nauseum. How each of the search engines would integrate users’ streams into their results pages then, was something many people were eager to see.
As we now know, Google opted to integrate real time search results into normal SERPs, while Bing chose to dedicate a separate page to Twitter searches. Although users were initially largely in favor of Google’s approach, there’s a chance that future returns may show that Bing’s method may be the most ideal, whether or not that attempt was intentional.
Oneupweb.com, a digital marketing agency, oversaw a study which found that, although more users see Google’s real time search results, they are also similarly overlooked by most users. The study divided its participants into two distinct groups- one of them consisting of what they labeled consumers, and the other populated with information foragers. Although they found that information foragers had the tendency to click on real time results with slightly more frequency than consumers, neither group appeared particularly interested in what they had to offer. More specifically, the study found that consumers interacted with the real time results 10% less than the information foragers, and only 55% of participants could even find them easily to begin with.
There are a few things that make this noteworthy for Bing. Most importantly, is the fact that real time searches occur in one of two ways – passively when they pop up while a user is searching for a given term, and actively when they’re seeking out what others are currently saying about a particular subject. Google’s method of integrating real time search results only covers the first instance, and given the fact that many users seem to skip over them almost entirely, provides a largely inadequate experience.
Because of this, the door to real time search success has been largely left open by Google for Bing to step through. Its relative size and backing by Microsoft means that the opportunity is there, waiting to be capitalized on, and it could compete with more notable real time search engines such as LeapFish and OneRiot. That is, of course, assuming Google doesn’t have something in the works already, and given their track record, you never know.
Written by Kenny K.