Twitter is looking to become a Google competitor in real time search by announcing plans to build a search ranking algorithm. The algorithm will assign a “reputation” score to certain tweets and use this to deliver the most relevant results to searches.

Currently, search.twitter.com simply performs a text match and returns all posts that mention the keyword you’ve searched for. The down side of this is that for popular terms, many times you will just see re-tweets and low value content from hundreds or thousands of users. By assigning a ranking system to these results, you’ll be able to see the most meaningful results first.

The changes were announced by Santosh Jayaram, who recently joined Twitter after managing search quality operations at Google. Jayaram said that not only will Twitter launch a ranking algorithm; they will also begin scanning the links included within tweets and start indexing this content.

This could see Twitter become a serious competitor to Google in the field of real time search. By indexing external links it will help to make twitter a more complete index about what’s happening in real time across the web.

In June of last year, Google announced they had improved their indexing of Flash files – and web designers around the globe rejoiced. Many web designers love flash because it frees them from the creative shackles of HTML and can give them the “WOW” factor when presenting new websites to clients.

Unfortunately, while flash sites may look great, they’re a nightmare when it comes to SEO. Google’s improvements in flash indexing did help some flash sites to rank, but most of the fundamental problems with flash still remain.

Below are 4 reasons why I believe small business owners should avoid building flash based websites.

1. Different Content is not on Different URLs
Because your content is all contained within a single SWF file, there are no additional pages for Google to index and this severely impacts things like bookmarking your site, analytics etc.

2. Basic SEO Tags are Still Missing
While Google can read text from within SWF files, most of the time, basic SEO tags will be lost. Examples of these are link anchor text, H1/H2 tags, image alt tags and bold text. Missing these tags is going to have a negative impact on your ranking.

3. Not All Browsers Have Flash Installed
If the user does not have flash installed, or is using a device that doesn’t support flash (eg: Apple’s iPhone) the content is going to be lost completely.

4. Flash Doesn’t Receive a Lot of Links
There are a number of reasons why flash sites don’t earn as many links as HTML pages. Some of these reasons include:

* Less social media links because users can’t link to content within your site.
* Less blog/news links because users can’t easily quote your text.
* Less one way links from resource websites because specific content is not on a separate URL

Overall, I believe the benefit of building a slightly more interactive flash based website is far outweighed by the negative SEO impact it can have. If your website designer is determined to use flash, ask them to use it sparingly rather than designing your entire site with it.

Thanks to SEOmoz and Search Engine Land for some great insight on this topic.

Executives in the major telcos will be feeling heat as Google unveiled their latest communications move this week – welcome Google Voice.

Google Voice is “an application that helps you better manage your voice communications.” Says the Google product managers.

The new application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail (see the video below) and archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive. You can also use the service to make low-priced international calls and easily access Goog-411 directory assistance.

The Google Voice service is built on the Grand Central platform that Google acquired a couple of years ago.

GrandCentral offers many great features, including a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones, a central voicemail inbox that you could access on the web, and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail.

It’s the sort of offering that will really shake up the telecommunications industry. Google has been befriending many of the telcos in an effort to break into the mobile space, but this latest move might have many of them rethinking the relationship.

Google Voice will eventually integrate with Google apps meaning users will have a seedless journey across all Google services – providing a powerful tool for consumers and business owners alike.