Twitter has been busy in the last couple of weeks… After experimenting with a new expanded Timeline, the micro-blogging social network apparently now experimenting with its real time search and offering “Top news” or “Top People” (depends on the search query).

I heard about it in the last few days but i didn’t manage to see it myself or find a reliable source to verify it, until TechCrunch has reported about it and approved it. It also released couple screenshots from the Twitter’s search results, Here’s an example of a query produced a “Top people” result:

When the user was searching for the query “schonfeld“, the first result that came up was Erick Schonfeld (editor of TechCrunch) as “Top people”. Here’s another example:

This time, when the user was searching for the query “twitter“, the first result was a recent news article about Twitter as “Top news”. As for the moment, the new search feature is only available in small group of accounts.

Potentially a Great Move

I think that it can be a great improvement to the search experience in Twitter and as a matter of fact to the whole Twitting experience. That if, of course, the algorithm by Twitter’s search is efficient enough and would have high correlation between queries and the real top people/news. Right now, it seems that it’s based on Retweets and some list of highly reputable accounts.

The new search feature can contribute greatly to online businesses that would be highly considered and will be featured as “Top”. It can also encourage publishers to use Twitter more as a press release source, as they would know that more people will be exposed to their social posts.

I may be jumping a little ahead now, but i suspect that if this move will succeed we’ll have to add another marketing effort to our work at home- SEO for Twitter…