Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, has announced a new partnership with Twitter.

Bing was the first out of the blocks to announce a deal. Now we see Google embracing the shift towards real-time search.

Every day there are millions of tweets on every conceivable topic, and its popularity is rapidly growing!

Paul Yiu of Bing says: “Twitter give us access to public opinion and thoughts in a way that has not before been possible. From important social and political issues to keeping friends up to date on the minute-by-minute of our daily lives, the web is getting more and more real time.”

Bing is currently displaying Twitter results in a cloud above its existing search results, with the more popular topics and hot trends appearing bigger and bolder than other real-time topics.

Twitter trends are only available to Bing users located in the United States, however this will be expanded over time.

Soon we will see how Google intends to display Twitter trends. . . no doubt it will be neatly wrapped in to Google Wave at some time?

Earlier today I was using Google Trends and noticed something different when I conducted a search on a trending topic.

Let me explain.

Today’s most trending topic is for the term Regina Lasko. The name mean’t absolutely nothing to this Aussie lad. So I typed the phrase in to Google only to find Regina Lasko is David Letterman’s wife and he has been embroiled in an extortion attempt — after having sex with employees in the past! The blackmailer wanted $2 million ($AUD2.3 million) otherwise he was going to spill the beans on Mr Letterman.

Ok. Back to the purpose of this post. After typing in Regina Lasko I noticed at the bottom of Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) a Hot Trends information box is appearing. Just like the one below.

You can see I have focused on the hot trend for Regina Lasko, which is currently #1 out of 100 and ranked “volcanic” on the Hotness Scale. Other terms on the hotness scale include — on fire, spicy, medium and mild.

Trend information is also highlighted visually. You can see from the graph there has been a surge in people searching for Regina Lasko around 6pm PDT.

This is how Google Trends appears on the search results page:

Google has more than likely added “Hot Trend” information to the search results due to the popularity of Twitter and the demand for real time information. It will be interesting to see how hot trends and real time search evolve.

If you want to see how trend results differ in Bing and Yahoo try their trend tools:

• Bing xRank
• Yahoo Buzz
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