Microsoft and Google have both began integrating Twitter messages into their search engines, the companies announced today. Microsoft announced thatits Bing search engine will ofer access to the entire public Twitter feed at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. A beta vesion Bing Twitter search is currently available now in the US. The company said it also planned to incorporate status updates from social network Facebook into Bing.

Within hours of the announcement by Microsoft, Google said it too had reached an agreement with to include Twitter updates in search results.

"We are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results," Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience posted at Google's blog. "We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information," she added.

Bing's Twitter search allows users to search for what people are saying all over the web about breaking news topics.

If someone wants to keep an eye on this topic, he/she can just watch the Tweets roll in. Or, click on "See more Tweets about?" to go to a page full of Tweets. On that page, users can change the ordering to "Best Match." Here Microsoft arranges Tweets differently. If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower.