Yahoo planning real-time search feature

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 4 Nov 2009 at 09:26

Yahoo is to launch a real-time search feature and is running tests on harvesting feeds from Twitter, according to sources close to the project.

Staff at search specialist OneRiot say they are providing real-time results from blogs and other services as Yahoo attempts to catch up with rival search engines.

Yahoo has confirmed it is testing a new "search shortcut" that includes real-time results at the top of results pages. "The shortcut will only appear on certain queries that will be determined by Yahoo,” the company said. “This is a test designed to discover if showing such content is useful to people."

Real-time search is emerging as a must-have search feature, mainly due to the popularity of blogs and services such as Twitter. By searching streams of Twitter posts, a surfer can often get information about breaking events faster than using a conventional internet search and before news networks have published articles.

Last month, search rivals Google and Microsoft announced back-to-back deals to make Twitter messages retrievable by their search engines.