Microsoft and Google secured separate agreements to access real-time content from web phenomenon Twitter, intensifying their battle for a search market that Google dominates.

Google, and Microsoft’s five-month-old Bing, each announced deals to access Twitter’s store of public data in real time, in the latest sign of escalating competition between the two search engines.

The long-awaited deals are expected to ramp up the efficacy and lure of search results, by allowing users to scan real-time Tweets: 140-character stream-of-consciousness messages that Twitter hosts on its popular website.

The back-to-back announcements underscored how real-time data in search results is shaping up to be a pivotal battleground in the search arena.

Microsoft unveiled its deal with Twitter and provided an on-stage demonstration of the newly launched product at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Hours later, Google announced on its company blog its own agreement, promising that Twitter messages, or Tweets, would be incorporated into search results “in the coming months”.

Both companies would not disclose financial terms. Microsoft also announced a deal to include content from social network Facebook. Twitter, the three-year-old web start-up that has become an internet sensation popularised by celebrities and government, attracts tens of millions of visitors every month.

In September, it received a $100 million round of financing that valued the company at $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Twitter has yet to generate significant revenue from its free service, though it has mentioned advertising and premium features as potential ways to make money.

From this week Twitter search results will be accessible on a special section of Bing as a beta, or test product. Microsoft plans to present the most popular Tweets of the moment, while allowing web surfers to view Twitter messages that contain links to other web content. Microsoft will filter out spam and other extraneous data.

Microsoft said data from Facebook would be available in Bing at an unspecified later date. The Facebook deal encompasses only messages that its 300 million-plus users have flagged as viewable to the public, a practice that is relatively new and not as widespread on the social network, where users typically send messages to groups of friends.

Facebook Chief Operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said no money changed hands in the deal between Facebook and Microsoft, during a separate presentation at the Microsoft also inked a deal this year to entwine its search efforts with Yahoo’s.

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