London: Twitter and Russian search engine Yandex (YNDX.O) have agreed a partnership that will allow Yandex to show new tweets in its search results almost instantly, as Twitter becomes an increasingly important source of real-time information. Twitter will give Yandex access to its so-called firehose of all public tweets, the two companies said on Tuesday, in an agreement similar to the one the social short-messaging site has with Microsoft`s (MSFT.O) search engine, Bing.

"We wanted to make sure that Twitter content can be where Twitter users are already going," Twitter`s director of business development, April Underwood, told Reuters by phone. "Discovery through search is so important."

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Anton Pavlov, Yandex`s blog search manager, said in a statement: "People share news, exchange opinions and discuss all sorts of matters in real-time all the time. This kind of information will help us enhance our search results."

Yandex has about 60 percent market share in Russia, ahead of Google (GOOG.O) with about a quarter of the market, although global leader Google has recently begun to erode its lead.

Google no longer partners with Twitter, favoring its own fledgling Google+ social network for social search results. Asked about a possible renewal of a partnership with Google, Twitter`s Underwood said: "Anything`s possible, but there`s not really an update to provide there at this time."

Twitter has more than 100 million active users and 400 million visitors per month. Its valuation tops $8 billion, even though it has not yet established a money-making model.

Google+, which is more akin to Facebook than Twitter, has 90 million users.

Twitter and Yandex declined to give financial details of their agreement. Microsoft has been reported to have paid $30 million for its deal with Twitter.

Yandex reaches about 2.8 percent of global Internet users, according to Web metrics firm Alexa, while Bing reaches about 3.4 percent.
Bureau Report