The recent announcement of Twitter’s agreements with Google and Microsoft to provide access to the microblogging service’s data in real time has set tongues wagging in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), but start-ups and small companies like WOWD have already entered this market.
WOWD – pronounced "wowed" – is a search aggregator in the manner of Digg or Reddit, but instead of user-submitted links and voting, the system is automated. Rather than a traditional web crawler, WOWD uses what founder Boris Agapiev told physorg.com was a "distributed cloud architecture." The system distributes client software to users which monitors web surfing trends.
The result is that searches produce listings based not on a proprietary system of links and automated crawlers, but an up-to-the-minute picture of the pages that WOWD users are viewing. The potential benefits of this system for search engine optimization (SEO) professionals should be obvious.
Analysts are divided on the way in which social search will affect the industry. Some say that it will lead to a vast expansion of the role of search engine optimization (SEO) in online marketing, but others question the possible utility of optimized content in such a fast-changing medium.
