The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time SearchBy Brian Solis ppt

The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search By Brian Solis, blogger at BrianSolis.com and principal of FutureWorks , Author of the new book Engage!. And last month,

The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search

By Brian Solis, blogger at BrianSolis.com and principal of FutureWorks , Author of the new book

Engage! , Co-Author, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations and Now Is Gone

In 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches And last month, Google also

integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular

networks within the social Web Between Google and Collecta, Twitter Search is starting to show its age

The opportunities and benefits of accessing the real-time Web also represent its most notable deficiencies – the ability to truly focus the stream of cascading

information into a river of relevance Companies such as My6Sense are using a form of “digital intuition” to escalate tweets that match our patterns, behavior, and content we read

We are now staring in the face of a more sophisticated era of real-time search that will further advance, localize and personalize over time And, everything starts with the experimentation of sophisticated algorithms that filter and rank the content we’re hoping to discover

For example, Google recently adapted its PageRank technology for surfacing related tweets PageRank was originally developed to help find relevant Web pages through traditional search and was Google’s primary differentiation in a world of commodity search platforms Essentially, Google’s PageRank assesses the importance of Web pages tied to keywords based on link structure Authority

is determined by the quantity and quality of inbound links to each page as well as the branches of outlying link relationships that tie other pages to those within the first degree of inbound connections In other words, the more links to a page and the more linkers to each link, the greater the value of the original page

The challenge with real-time search is tying tweets or other social content to notable producers and their networks of reputed followers and sub-follower

architectures

In an interview with Technology Review, Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow who led development of real-time search, said “You earn reputation, and then you give reputation If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers, his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely

As Singhal emphasized, “It is definitely, definitely more than a popularity

contest.”

technology that packages tweets, such as geo-location data, we can expect to see a rapid evolution of real-time search

Basically, a follower is the equivalent of one page linking to another on the Web Google recognizes each as a form of recommendation So as higher quality pages link to sources, the original page increases in value In the Social Web, reputed users who follow other users inherently increase the stature of the individual to whom they connect

Searching for a particular keyword now will produce qualified results for Web pages and also content published in Twitter and other social networks, ranked by the authority of the page and publisher of social objects as assessed by PageRank technology

In the eyes of Google, the adaptation of PageRank for Social Media essentially creates a human algorithm or a PeopleRank of sorts that may eventually serve as

a foundation for also assessing the authority of an individual in the social Web Other companies are also introducing new services to measure general authority for individuals online Klout, for example, developed a sophisticated platform for measuring the influence of users in Twitter Based on three sophisticated stages

of semantic calculation (True Reach, Amplification Probability, Network Value) Klout can determine not only the level of influence of any user on Twitter but also the most influential voices tied to topics or keywords Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is also including tweets in its real-time search feed and could, for instance, integrate Klout’s influence engine to rank tweets and other social objects to

qualify results

But while the idea of ranking influence on the social web is interesting and

necessary, it is far from perfected Running searches in either engine today will only reinforce this sentiment However, with that said, it is helping us by

reducing the obstacles that typically prevent or prolong the process of finding pertinent information It will only improve over time regardless of our personal views on establishing a hierarchy of people in social media

As the human algorithm continues to evolve, it transforms the definition of and logic for relationships We’re adapting how we connect to one another and also constructing new roads for sharing, filtering, and ranking relevant social objects The ties that bind us now serve as the source of how we discover information and also how it finds us And as such, the relationships we maintain on the Social Web determine the ranking of the content we produce and its place within the social hierarchy of search results

Perhaps the next iterations of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) will focus on enhancing the link structures of human relationships to escalate the prominence of our stature and the social objects we create and share

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Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of most prominent thought leaders and

published authors in new media A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has influenced the effects of emerging media on the convergence of marketing,

communications, and publishing He is principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media agency in Silicon Valley, and has led interactive and social programs for Fortune

500 companies, notable celebrities, and Web 2.0 startups BrianSolis.com is ranked among the top of world's leading business and marketing online resources

Solis is the author of Engage! The complete guide for businesses to build, cultivate and

measure success in the new Web.

In 2009, Brian Solis, along with Deirdre Breakenridge, released, Putting the Public back

in Public Relations

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