As Google has recently started to include real time search in their result pages, many of us are trying to understand the algorithm that helps them determine which tweets to display. MIT’s Technology review wrote a post on “How Google Ranks Tweets” and includes some valuable insight from Amit Singhal, a Google engineer who suggests some contributing factors. Those factors include:
- Number of Followers
- Presence of #Hashtags (potentially negative)
Here’s some notable commentary from Amit:
“As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”
The overall goal is to identify reputed followers and return their results. Those with a credible reputation will be less likely to be spammers and more likely to provide valuable content via their twitter feed. Amit makes an analogy relating to followers saying that a follow on twitter is the equivalent an inbound link from another website. Both are a vote of confidence and the higher the number, the more likely the “followee” is to be credible.
