Bing announced on their blog (http://mashable.com/bing-local-twitter-trends/) today they have created maps with Mashable that show which topics are trending on Twitter in locations around the world.
Whilst much of the content on Twitter is the digital industry talking to itself – especially in the UK – this is one interesting example of search engines using social data.
I believe we’ll see more social data used to enhance the quality and relevancy of search results and news sites; it sends a signal of what is of interest to the public that the engines and savvy publishers will be keen to plug into their algorithms.
For example: if a political candidate is receiving a lot of mentions in social media by people located in the south east of England, and somebody in that region goes to Google news, news stories about that candidate could be boosted up the page.
This could be extend into search, too – pushing sites up the listings based on social data for the searchers region.
Duncan Parry, Co-founder and Head of Paid Search
