Yahoo Looking to OneRiot to Offer Real-Time Search

Yahoo might be partnering with Microsoft on search, but the company is looking to forge a partnership to offer real-time search for things like Twitter.

Yahoo may be dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on its ten-year search deal with Microsoft, but the company apparently isn’t giving up on enhancing its own search capabilities: Reuters and other industry sources are reporting that Yahoo is conducting tests with OneRiot and a handful of other potential partners to add real-time results to its Internet search feature.

Real-time searches focus on the so-called “social Web”—services like Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Digg, YouTube, and blogs—to provide a picture of what Internet users (and various online communities) are buzzing about at any given moment. Real-time searches have proven to be more valuable than conventional search engines when tracking events in real-time, whether breaking news in a particular area (like an earthquake, political protests, or major public events) as well as site- and place-specific events like concerts, sporting events, and even traffic.

Last month, both Microsoft and Google announced enhancements to their search technology that would make Twitter posts available to their search engines.