Rumors have been bouncing around that Twitter could become the next big search engine – is this actually possible? I think not. Here’s 7 reasons why Twitter isn’t (and can’t be) a search engine.

1. Single source

   Twitter is just a single source for data. A real search engine, on the other hand, scans the web for information. You can’t say that what people are talking about on a single website is relevant to the entire web.

2. Relevant or recent?

   Twitter search sorts results by when they happened. The most relevant results could show up first, but it’s also very possible that they wouldn’t be anywhere near the first page.

3. Tweets are short

   140 isn’t a lot. A search engine will scan the entire page for data (keywords and things), but Twitter can only search from what is within that 140 characters.

4. Spam

   This is a probably that both Twitter and search engines have to face. As there are informative tweets that would make good search results, there are many tweets that aren’t informative or relevant to anyone but their tweeter.

5. Lack of search algorithm

   As I mentioned earlier, Twitter search just orders results by date. This wouldn’t really give the most relevant results.

6. Real purpose

   This one kind of goes with the one before it. If Twitter were to add a search algorithm to their search feature, wouldn’t that be ruining it’s original purpose? From how I see it, Twitter search exists so that you can learn about what people are tweeting about (recently), not to find things on the web.

7. Similar Sites

   If you consider Twitter a search engine, think about all of the other websites that would also be search engines. Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon, the list goes on and on.

Don’t get me wrong – I think that Twitter search is a great service. It isn’t a search engine though. It’s more of an alert engine – it tells you what websites are becoming popular, not the most relevant.

Do you think Twitter is a search engine? Do you agree with my stance? Either way, I would love to hear from you! Please leave a comment. :)

Tags: Alert Engine, Search Engine, Twitter