Sunnyvale, California — Yahoo Inc, attempting to outwit its rivals in providing up-to-the-minute Internet search results, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company said it is experimenting with a new search feature that delivers results beyond standard search results based on relevant information being shared by Internet users in real-time, the latest move among the biggest search brands to stand apart, according to sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
As normally discussed around the search industry circle, real-time search constitutes a difficult undertaking for Yahoo. Google and Facebook have already made their first efforts in this field, and their partner — Twitter — has a rather higher profile than Yahoo’s pal, OneRiot.
According to WSJ reports appeared earlier, states that Yahoo was partnering with heavily-funded startup OneRiot — which indexes links users share on Twitter, Digg and other social networking sites — to power the real-time results.
In a statement, Yahoo explains the initiative as a “test configured to discover if showing such content is useful” and says that depending on the response it will later determine whether to include real-time results for all users. It comes as announcements by both Google and Microsoft last month that they would index real-time Tweets in their search engines.
However, sources say that while OneRiot is in fact a partner, several other real-time search companies are also involved in the effort. The OneRiot test is planned to go live in the coming days. A number of startups have entered the space lately, including Collecta and Topsy.
After conversing with several anonymous sources, Wall Street Journals’, Jessica E. Vascellaro wrote, for example, “Yahoo said the real-time shortcuts will only appear on certain search queries and that the company is still weighing whether to integrate the results across its user base,” so if you are looking for George Washington, you should not have to read about “dead president” Halloween costumes on Digg.
A representative from OneRiot said she could not comment on the matter.
Another source familiar with the matter said Yahoo was conducting real-time search tests with other companies, as well. By exploring streams of Twitter messages, a Web surfer can often get information faster than through some standard Web pages retrieved through traditional Internet searches.
Last month, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced consecutive deals to make Twitter messages retrievable by their search engines.
Yahoo and Microsoft in July entered into a separate 10-year search deal, which is expected to close next year. Under the terms of that deal, any data Microsoft’s search engine has access to also would be accessible to Yahoo, Yahoo Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh said last month.
He said at the time that Yahoo had been testing the limited inclusion of Twitter messages within search results to certain users.
Yahoo’s deal with OneRiot, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is autonomous from Yahoo’s deal to outsource some of its search features to Microsoft Corp., according to a person familiar with the matter.
The OneRiot deal does not include any revenue sharing elements, according to the first source familiar with the matter.
The test is yet another indication that despite its agreement to outsource its search technology to Microsoft, Yahoo continues to innovate on the search front. Yahoo executives have repeatedly asserted that they will continue to control the user interface around their search results.
Real-time search is growing up as a favorite way to find information on the Internet, due in large part to the popularity of microblogging service Twitter, which lets users broadcast 140-character messages.
One Riot, based in Boulder, Colorado, collects real-time Internet information from various sources, including Twitter, Digg and its own network of 3 million users that use the company’s software. The company has raised $27 million in funding to date.
In an interview last week, Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams said Twitter is trying to tackle some of those problems. The San Francisco company is devoting more engineering resources to its own Twitter search engine and is focusing on how to show people the most relevant tweet, said Williams, not just the latest one that matches the terms they searched.
David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at digital marketing agency 360i, said he believes the value of real-time search data for businesses is greater than the appeal of data to advertisers. He predicts that one of the biggest uses of “real-time search engines” that produce results based on what is popular on the Web right now, will be for queries related to breaking news. But reaching users searching for news is far less interesting to advertisers than reaching searchers who are looking to buy something, he said.
In fact, at last week’s Yahoo analyst meeting, the company demonstrated a futuristic search interface which completely replaced the standard ten blue links with various modules. So, for instance, a search for “Bank of America” would lead to modules featuring the latest news on the company, its stock price, an overview of its business, and nearby locations.
Still, the search engines are faced with the challenge of figuring out when real-time content is relevant or just clutter. In addition, the business model around real-time search is murky.