Whit Andrews

Microsoft indicated yesterday it has added some of Twitter to to its Bing search index. I got called a week or so ago by a reporter at a sizeable magazine who wanted to talk “real-time search,” and I admit I stumbled doing the math on the topic. I do remember when Google’s indexing was so fast, and the Web so small, that it saw itself as essentially real-time — and they’re still powerful zippy. But certainly with the advent of twitter and other services, real-time search has become increasingly important to a variety of perspectives.

I did some test searches, and I wasn’t impressed yet. I’m not saying #bingfail, mind you. I’m just saying that it needs some work, and no one at Microsoft would say different. We’ve covered the bing launch and we’re continuing on. What I will say, though, is that one of the searches — on @karaswisher, who called me once for a Wall Street Journal story (there, that takes care of today’s mention of that event in 2001) — shows a very smart result set in comparison to Google’s result set. Bing pops Swisher’s flickr tag, YouTube channel, and Gawker activity. (Note: Flickr’s a Yahoo pproperty and YouTube’s a Google property. Props to Microsoft to playing well with others, or exploiting them, depending on one’s perspective.)

Hit diversity is important. Bing is grabbing different ways of looking at Swisher from an admirably diverse set of sources and presenting them in a crisp interface. On that, I am impressed.