With the launch of Google Buzz a few days ago it is only natural to believe that Google will give precedence to Buzzes over Tweets in their social search results. (Sounds like it is an animal sound search engine)
But after a few test searches it seems as if Google has not done this as of yet. For example – when searching for the term “Bill Clinton” I received a blended or universal results page. The first section of the universal search results consisted of three different news articles all pertaining to his recent medical incident that occurred last week. The next three links consist of web pages, Bill’s Wiki page, The Clinton Foundation and the Whitehouse.gov site.
Then comes the good stuff – the social search results. I sat for a good 10 minutes watching the stream incoming social results and was surprised not to see a single Buzz show up in the stream. Almost every single result that came scrolling through was from Twitter.com with a few sprinkled in from blogs.
So has Google decided not to include Buzzes in social search results for the time being? That could be the reason and it could be a smart move. They may not want to shake up the user experience of the main product right away without getting an idea of how people are using the new Google Buzz feature. Twitter is still the premier resource for real-time search results. Yes more people are logging into FaceBook but those users are stalking pictures and posting on their friends walls. Twitter users are the ones sharing information and commenting on current real-time topics.
This puts Google in an interesting spot. They launched Buzz for a reason – it’s an obvious competitor to Twitter and as any good business they want their service to be a hit and grow exponentially. But if they were to give precedence to Buzzes over Tweets it may negatively affect the search results they display and hurt their users’ experience.
The next few weeks will tell us a ton about Google and what they plan to do with their social search product. Eventually you have to believe that Buzzes will be shown in social search results but how frequently will be the question that needs to be asked. Unless Buzz takes off and in used in a similar fashion as Twitter there is a possibility that Buzzes will not be as good of a resource for social search results as Tweets or blog posts are.
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