Google and Bing have presented a large number of innovations and services this last couple of weeks. Here is an overview.

Google lets you search the Twitter archive

This week we saw reports making Twitter the number two search engine in the US, behind Google, but ahead of Yahoo! We are not so sure about that. Twitter counts automated searchs as regular ones, Yahoo does not.

Still, the Twitter search engine does give you access to a real time stream of tweets, i.e. short messages signalling what people are concerned about right now, and that is useful.

Since Twitter gives you snapshot of current hot topics, their historical database may also give you information of what people were talking about further back in time. Google has now gotten access to that database.

To try out Google’s Twitter history search do a search on Google, click “Show options” on the search results page, then select “Updates.”

Google says:

“The first page will show you the familiar latest and greatest short-form updates from a comprehensive set of sources, but now there’s a new chart at the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from that specific time period.”

The chart shows the relative volume of activity on Twitter about the topic.

By the way, US Libary of Congress has made a deal with Twitter allowing it to archive every tweet every made. This is done for the sake of historical research.

Bing includes Twitter search results

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has had its own Twitter search service for some time now. You have also had the chance to search for tweets by “prominent and prolific Twitterers” by searching for the @username.

Now Bing includes tweets directly into regular search results within seconds of a breaking news event.

Bing says:

“We are currently testing these features with a small subset of our users and queries – so you may or may not see it appearing on your search results page. We plan to make the feature available to our users in the US within a short period. ”

Google introduces recipe rich snippets

A snippet is the paragraph of text Google includes below the click-able search listing. Google may now add recipe specific information in that snippet for searches for food recipes.

You can add relevant information to your recipe pages to help Google generate such snippets. Google says:

“…if you have recipe content on your site, you can get started now by marking up your recipes with microdata, RDFa, or the hRecipe microformat.”

Google has more information on how to do this.

Site Speed is now a ranking factor in Google

If you own a web site and care about your Google rankings, you may want to take a look at how fast your web pages load. Google now confirms that site speed is a factor in their search engine algorithm.

“Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there,” Google says.

“Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point.”

Google Docs can now handle up to 50 collaborators

Google’s online office suite, Google Docs, can now let as many as 50 persons collaborate on a document, spreadsheet or presentation.

The Google Docs blog says:

“We’ve brought the responsive, real-time editing experience you’ve come to expect from our spreadsheets over to documents, which means you can now see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. ”

The spreadsheet editor has become faster, and from now on you can also collaborate on drawings using the drawing editor.

Google has a a video presenting the new features.

Bing redesigns shopping search

Bing has created a list of product categories on the left side of the shopping homepage to help you start your search. Click a category to drill down to other parts of the Bing catalogue.

Each product has its own page with a summary of relevant information including an expanded review section.

Bing says:

“You can narrow down by filtering on star ratings or use our powerful “opinion scorecard” to find the information that relates specifically to a particular aspect of the product that interests you.”

Bing has a video presenting the changes.

Localized Google Suggest

When you search the Web using Google there will appear a drop down menu with alternative search terms. Since last year Google has taken your geographic location into account, presenting different suggestions to, for instance, people in California and the UK.

Now Google will tailor search results to specific metropolitan areas in the US.

Google adds spelling enhancements for names

Google now does a better job of suggesting the correct spelling for names.

The Google Blog says:

“Our new technology is based on the concept that people often know something else about the person besides the approximate spelling of his name. People often include other terms such as ‘composer’ or ‘lawyer sparta wisconsin’ in their search query, which provides valuable context to help us narrow the range of possibilities for the spelling correction. We use these additional descriptive words to offer you better suggestions.”

For the time being the new enhancement is found in the US version of Google only.

Google adds spelling auto-correction in 31 languages

There is more to Google’s spelling abilities than guessing the right name. Google will often give you a link asking you whether you meant something else than what your original query might indicate.

In some cases Google might skip that link altogether, bringing you straight to a search result page for what Google considers the correct spelling:

“We auto-correct when we’re highly confident in our correction in order to get you the information you’re looking for that much faster. In the past week we’ve expanded auto-correction to 31 languages across over 180 domains, with more to come.”

Google Twitter Follow Finder

Google Labs is where Google hides innovations not considered ready for prime time. Google Follow Finder is one such service. It analyses public social graph information (following and follower lists) on Twitter to find people you might want to follow.

Just enter the twitter user name of a twitterer/tweep you admire and Google will give a list of tweeps you might like, as well as a list of people with followers similar to yours.

Google says:

“The lists in Google Follow Finder are generated using public following and follower lists on Twitter. For example, if you follow CNN and the New York Times on Twitter, and most people who follow CNN and the New York Times also tend to follow TIME, we’ll suggest TIME as a ‘Tweep you might like.’ The list of ‘Tweeps with similar followers’ is simply a list of accounts with similar follower lists to yours.”