Google Search Appliance Adds 'Tweets' To Corporate Decision-Making

Google introduced search results from Twitter in real-time

Google said adding outside tweets to the results of internal searches would provide workers with an additional dimension of information when making decisions.

Google Search Appliance is the company's rack-mount server for businesses that want to add Google's search capabilities to their corporate networks.

The search appliance now surfaces tweets next to search results, making it easier for information workers to "more easily leverage the wisdom of the crowd," said Cyrus Mistry, product manager for Google Enterprise Search, in a blog posting. "Customers have told us that placing web results next to intranet ones often allows employees to think differently about a particular topic and approach it in new ways."

"Social information is important for businesses: Employees searching for information needed to do their jobs benefit from real-time news too," Mistry said. "They might be developing a new breakfast cereal, or designing a marketing plan for a clothing line, or writing [a] strategy report for a political campaign. In all of these cases, understanding what is being said just as Twitter users are saying it can be invaluable."

Google Search Appliance already offers a feature called "Related Web Results" which lets workers view results from Google.com alongside corporate search results. Instructions for adding the new Twitter capabilities to the Google Search Appliance are available in Mistry's blog.

Thursday Yahoo said it was expanding the search capabilities of Yahoo News to include information from Twitter feeds. On Monday Google said it was adding search results from Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as from news sites and blogs, in real time.