Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
Google
Algorithms judge the relevance of microblog posts containing 140 characters or less.
To deliver useful search returns from the so-called real-time Web--such as seconds-old Twitter "tweets" reporting traffic jams--Google has adapted its page-ranking technology and developed new algorithmic tricks and filters to keep returns relevant, according to a leading Google engineer.
Google rolled out real-time search technology last month, to offer searchers access to brand-new blog posts and news items far faster than the five to 15 minutes it previously took Google's Web crawlers to discover newly created items.
Bing, Cuil, and other search engines also provide various kinds of real-time results. Both Google and Bing have also forged major deals with Twitter to get real-time access to tweets, those 140-character microblog posts sent out by Twitter members. But Google claims to offer the most comprehensive real-time results by scanning news headlines, blogs, and feeds from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other sources.
The tweets are a mainstay of Google's real-time results, but Google has not previously discussed how it ranks them. A fundamental Google strategy for identifying tweet relevance is analogous to that used by Google's PageRank technology, which helps find relevant Web pages with traditional Web search. Under PageRank, Google judges the importance of pages containing a given search keyword in part by looking at the pages' link structure. The more pages that link to a page--and the more pages linking to the linkers--the more relevant the original page.
In the case of tweets, the key is to identify "reputed followers," says Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, who led development of real-time search. (Twitterers "follow" the comments of other Twitterers they've selected, and are themselves "followed.")
"You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone--then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers," his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, Singhal says. It is "definitely, definitely" more than a popularity contest, he adds.
"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."
But Google's social-ranking tricks are hardly the only method the search giant uses to extract relevance from tweets. Google also developed new ways to choose which (if any) tweets to surface for common terms like "Obama"--and to avoid spam or low-quality tweets--all within seconds.
Data-mining techniques reveal fake Twitter accounts that give the impression of a vast political movement.
Search giant compresses the time frame of its results from minutes to seconds.
Cuil indexes your Facebook network and produces results based on your social connections.
I've recently come to know of a new service that lets one "buy" a ReTweet of their content. This begs the question, would the Google algorithm favor or penalize such Tweets when scoring such content?
Interestingly enough, the article I posted about ReTweet.it has received mixed reviews.
Would be interested to read and hear your take on this ReTweet.it API and how the Google bots will score such content?
Thank you for a great article.
arthurattwell, as far as I know Google is not considering your following/follower ratio, it's more about the overall numbers of followers. So, even if you have 200 followers and follow 20, and someone else has 12000 followers and follows 13000, the latter person will have their tweet shown higher up. Again, I don't know this for a fact, but that's what I derived from the articles I've read. In the end, it's all fair with Google taking into the account authority of your followers.
I do not understand why hashtagging would be detrimental to google's desire for relevance?
Very interesting. I can't understand why hash tagging would be a problem for them either.
I did like the information about the credence given to the amount and quality of followers though. Particularly as I have just finally found a tool to ethically get tons of new Twitter followers on autopilot.
Here's what I am using right now http://www.TwittollowerReview.com and it seems like, from what you say, Google will give me the credence of having a lot of followers (1,600 followers in first 3 weeks).
Hope that's the case!
Interesting that Google is dinging hash tags for search relevancy even though they are the designed search mechanism for Twitter. Seems like hash tags are like SEM and non-hash tags are like SEO.
Just another example of how popularity trumps intelligence. Anyone at MIT (or elsewhere) see problems with this? Clearly the two aren't mutually exclusive, but dang, a ranking model this simplistic, from Google no less, is an insult. I thought they hired the best. Apparently, they hired the in kids.
As Twitter matures, I suspect the bar will be set higher when deciding who to follow and who will follow you back. Like most, I've experimented with more than a few Twitter marketing tools. The ones I prefer are those that customize my settings, so I can better track my followers and purge those who need purging. With only 14,500 followers, I'm by no means a major Twitter player, but since I use Bit.Ly to track my followers post-tweet activity, I can quickly decide who I need to add to my Purge List
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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arthurattwell
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It would be interesting to know whether Google takes Twitter users' following:follower ratio into account (and retweetability for that matter). I like to assume Google's thought of everything. The thought of some follow-trawler getting great Google ranking is frightening.
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