Simarprit’s Weblog

Search engine world is full with its fair share of migraine inducing challenges, one of these challenges is prioritizing the shortlisted results. All search engines have worked on complex mathematical models to overcome this challenge, Google came to dominate the search engine world on the basis of one of its mathematical models which is commonly known as PageRank. The complexity of today’s search indexing and retrieval has compelled Google to look beyond the PageRank, Increasingly one can find results in Google’s top listings which are mint fresh and have no history on the net.

In the past Blogs brought in a tough challenge to Google’s retrieval capabilities and Google handled them very well. The success of microblogging website Twitter, where most of the micro-blogs embed a nano-blog is the new challenger to Google’s highly complex and hugely successful mathematical models. Twitter is changing the game and raising more complex questions, the question I am battling with is Should Google “Power” the Search for Twitter or should Twitter “Power” the Research for new additions and indexing for Google. The tough question is both the scenarios look very likely and bring in their benefits and both the scenarios have larger than ever conflicting complex equations which need to be resolved.

Many researchers and search engine specialists attribute Google’s success to its PageRank and anchor text weights in its master search algorithm, while it is true – the importance of other significant weights within Google cannot be undermined too, and it is these other parameters which would hold the key as Google moves into what may be called the Twitter era.

Search.twitter.com is exciting but it is not on the same page as Google Search to be considered as a challenge to Google Search. They are currently as apart as a shoe is from a spacecraft – you can wear a shoe in a spacecraft but you can’t compare the two. However search.twitter.com does give Twitter a much needed toehold  into search space and also makes Google consider Twitter a bit more seriously than few random tweets around. Google is a very evolved search engine, it is almost human, it has its own mind and it resolves queries intuitively. For Google it is the other parameters and filters and independent projects like Google Latitude which may give it as edge and save the day.

A closer look at the two and what they stand for:

Google has always been good in proximity search. Twitter thrives in proximity.

Google has mastered the art and science of crawling, indexing and rating blogs. Twitter is the art and science of microblogging.

Google holds just about every content physically with itself in encrypted compressed form in its repository. Twitter treats almost all content as, use by minutes and hours – highly perishable.

Google crawls. Twitter receives.

Google understands the Internet. Twitter is creating the new Internet.

Google has conquered many operational challenges including the challenge of scalability. Twitter has tough time handling challenges and managing scalability.

Google has fueled its growth by creating and acquiring. Twitter is making its APIs do the trick for it.

Google largely works on what has happened. Twitter is more about what is happening right now.

Google is more like a monologue – Google telling you. Twitter is a public speaking platform where everyone speaks and everyone listens.

Google’s core competence is to collect, index, query and present. Twitter’s core competence is to offer an evolving platform to communicate and share.

What if, if tomorrow Google starts asking – What are you doing now and here? What if, if Google puts a Twitter bar with a tiny logo of Twitter and starts asking – What are you doing? What if, if Twitter acquires Ask.com or someone else and puts a second prompt – What are you looking for? What if, if Twitter goes ahead acquires a crawler and starts indexing pages which don’t belong to it? What if, if Twitter just replaces its own search with Google search?

All the scenarios are likely, the scenario of Google powering search for Twitter and embedding Twitter’s real time feed into Google search results looks the most winning scenario for all stake holders. Google wins, Twitter, Google regular surfer wins and and Googles committed tweeps win.

Google is rolling, Twitter is rolling, together they can rock and rock for atleast a decade.

Still writing…