Twitter Search Traffic Poised to Eclipse Google Blog Search

The search engine landscape is quietly under going a major revolution. There are two major forces at work here: our growing hunger for real-time information and the coming convergence of search and social networking. The latter adds a much needed layer of trust to traditional search that helps us qualify sources.

While some feel such shifts in search patterns potentially pose a short-term threat to Google, I don't quite see it that way. Google latest "Vince" update shows they clearly get the trust issue. However, Google does not have nearly the same depth in social networking as others and that's an issue longer term.

Instead, more immediately, these two trends will likely spur the growth of a new class of "live web" search tools that are tightly embedded inside social networks. This will almost certainly seal the demise of dedicated blog search sites. In addition, it's conceivable, though far less likely, that both these trends could erode news search sites as consumers seek out filtered information from people they trust.

Consider this nugget. According to compete.com (an account is required to view this subdomain data), traffic to search.twitter.com tripled in the last six months. Meanwhile, Google Blog Search traffic is flat and, only until just recently, the same can be said for Technorati. More importantly, Twitter Search has just about eclipsed Google Blog Search. As of February, Twitter Search attracted 1.35 million users while Google Blog Search, which has been plagued by relevance issues, sits at 1.38 million users.

Twitter's growth in search has been aided by its girth in the press. According to news volulme data from Daylife, Twitter's weekly media mentions rocketed from 2000 per week last year to nearly 8000 today. However, I see this all as just the beginning.

Right now Facebook and Twitter only let you search for content from across the entire network. You can't limit your search to only what your trusted circle have shared. On Friendfeed, however, you can. Still, as bullish as I remain about Friendfeed, I feel the utility of its social search feature will pale in comparison to what Facebook and Twitter could do if they were to enable the same functionality. The reason is reach.

Keep an eye on the social search space. It's not a short-term threat to Google, but it certainly represents a major shift in where and how we will search for relevant news and information by layering in trusted sources.

Comments

[Gail Nelson]

Steve,

The stats you cite are amazing - flat growth for Google, exponential increases in social search. Information continues to shape shift. Today, I find most of the interesting new articles I read (outside of my normal daily pubs and sites) from my Twitter friends. It is about trust, as you say, but also about shared interests.

Case in point: I read your blog post (saw your Twitter!) right after an article about Google's new behaviorial ad strategy. Google is now serving up ads based on an individual's search behavior, after holding out for a long time. For a marketer like me, that's big news. And yes, I saw that in a Twitter post, too.

[Bradley Robb]

I'm really surprised that so many people actually use Technorati.

[David Lano]

Steve,

I agree with your take on search and the overall direction it's taking. You can see my take on the whole Google vs. Twitter search arena here: http://bit.ly/966Em

[Wayan]

I'm surprised you reference blogsearch.google.com As you've pinted out before, Google Blog Search has issues, which could explain its flat lining more than the desire of people to search blogs.

Now if you aggregated -all- blog search engines and compared them with Twitter, you could get a real apples to apples comparison

[Micah Baldwin]

Steve, your data is interesting. One could argue that search.twitter.com is a different animal than both blogsearch.google and technorati. But I understand what you are getting at. In many ways, its imperative to understand that searching behavior is changing when it comes to trusted (blog) or social (social graph) content. People want to search through their social graph and trusted sources rather than the entire world's info.

For many, its a much more effective search experience to be able to return results only from a trust-based network. Probably why Lijit has more traffic that your three examples.. :)

Here is the chart with Lijit included: http://drop.io/socialsearch/asset/feb-snapshot-jpg

[Brent Stangel]

Thanks for the info. on Lijit.Have been looking for something just like it.Cool.

Brent

[trypu]

all in one search engine

[jim]

great take on search, very interesting. Let's all realize when you say "google" and when some of the commenters say "google" you're talking blog search, which is a tiny fraction of google search. As an example, last month google.com had over 130 MILLION unique visitors -- and the numbers above pale in comparison. But the trend could be right...real-time search using social media. It'll take quite a while to knock off the giant though.

[Joseph Fiore]

Great insights - thanks for sharing. I agree on the points that Twitter if fast becoming an important search property, and IMHO, this is especially the case in the area of online reputational economies.

The one thing Twitter does lack in comparison to blogs, forums, and social networks is the depth of meaning and context that other aspects of the social web provide with abundance (sometimes to a fault, but often with a relevance not possible with 140 character tweet).

While the traffic stats are an impressive visual to demonstrate your point, there are aspects of topic/discussion relevance that cannot be properly measured, and the comparison between a conversation happening on a blog and one on a micro-blog isn't an entirely fair one because IMHO Twitter isn't really meant as a place for conversation.

Where I do see the greatest potential for growth in search numbers for the social web is if Facebook ever decides to open up its social network to real-time searching like Twitter - but that likely will not happen, so for now, Twitter is about as big a deal on the trends scene as its going to get :)

Joseph@RepuMetrix

[John A. Robb]

Filters will be the new search. It's fantastic that Google is trying to index "all of human knowledge" but how do we know what we want to learn? The key is in Filters and this is what the social web will bring. That will introduce new problems that will need solutions.

[Pranam Kolari]

Steve,

Interesting stats.

Do you know if Compete discounts search referrals, see for example:http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Ftechnorati.comhttp://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Atechnorati.com

Would be interesting to see trends across direct vs referral traffic.

[Joe Lazarus]

I'm surprised by the Twitter Search numbers and wonder if there's a data issue. Compete shows a total of 7.93 million unique visitors for Twitter.com in February (including search and all other sections of their site). If 1.36 million of those people visited search.twitter.com, that would mean 17% of their audience uses search. That's hard for me to believe since search isn't integrated into the main site and many people I talk to still don't know it exists. Similar data from Hitwise suggests that less than 3% of Twitter users use Twitter Search. That's closer to what I would imagine, though I guess anything is possible.

[Ian]

Why doesn't Google just add real-time results (e.g. Twitter posts) to it's suite of Universal search results alla image, video, local, news?

[Katy Barrilleaux]

very interesting data...thanks for sharing. I'm curious what twitter's search integration with user's home page will do with their search traffic. I'm guessing it will greatly increase. I hope that comScore starts tracking twitter searches soon. I'm dying to see actual search stats for twitter!

I don't necessarily agree that Google's blog search will die, however. Google has already integrated map, video, news, and images results in their top google.com results. I haven't noticed blogs integrated yet, but if it isn't, it likely will be soon.

[diego]

The trend on Twitter for "blog search" and "twitter search" is obviously partial to Twitter :) Still, look at the spikes for twitter search. The first one was caused by Skittles.

http://twist.flaptor.com/trends?gram=blog+search,twitter+search&table=1

[trypu]

all in one search engine

[MSolution]

...thanx for sharing, but i do support Katy, with a link to the search page, the traffic could possibly double if not treble!

[Jacoub]

I am sick of hearing about Twitter on my local Chicago newscasts, each time the anchors come off so ridiculous and out of touch. That being said, I think Twitter and others will represent a threat to google in the long run. Considering what is happening to traditional news outlet, with more people getting the news from blogs, the search function focusing on that will become increasingly important. Not that Google won't keep up, I just think people are becoming entrenched in twitter and facebook, becoming less likely to leave those sites.

"If they search it will you find them?"

~Ditley SEO Company