Microsoft’s search engine Bing has sealed a deal with Facebook and the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, which will add real-time web updates to its search results, in a bid to raise the level against arch rival Google.

At the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Qi Lu, a longtime Yahoo engineer who became Microsoft’s VP of online services last August, announced the deal, saying that a beta site can be found at Bing.com/Twitter.

Microsoft also announced a partnership with Facebook which allows Bing to index the status updates of users and make it public.

Terms of the deals were not revealed, but licensing a real-time pipe of instant data updates could give Twitter and Facebook a steady source of revenue.

We do not disclose financial terms. The key is this is a start. We believe there are more opportunities in our partnership with Twitter, according to the Associated Press.

Bing has been lagging behind its competitors but this new partnership could change the online search dynamics. According to the Web analytics firm StatCounter, Bing was down from 9.6 percent of the market in August to 8.5 percent in September. Meanwhile, Google moved up from 77.8 percent in August to 80 percent of the domestic market in September.

Google Facebook Twitter