The current popularity and influence of Twitter is well documented, including case studies from big brands like Comcast and Ford. We know the micro-blogging tool has power and we’ve seen the Twitter community flex its muscles and spread news (good and bad) faster than any other media source in the world (just ask Dominos Pizza).

I’ve written before about why companies and brands should be using social media, but news released yesterday (via cnet) widens Twitter’s appeal to more than just social media geeks.

Essentially, Twitter’s existing search is very limited in that a user can only search other user’s tweets. If someone mentions your product in a tweet, you can use search.twitter.com (or other numerous third-party search tools) to find that tweet and better understand the context of what is being said about your product.

However, it’s very common for people to use links in their tweets to provide followers with more information. Limited by 140-characters, we rely on links to tell the whole story, while our tweet serves only as an introduction. The problem with Twitter’s existing search is that it does not crawl these links, which deliver the majority of a story’s content.

As Mashable explains, the updates to Twitter’s search capability improves the micro-blogging’s appeal not just as a social media tool, but as a search engine. And, as marketers, we spend a lot of time trying to positively influence search engine rankings (SERs) for our clients.

It’s no secret that social media outlets provide an opportunity to boost or fill out SERs. User’s tweets have begun to garner attention from Google’s results, sometimes showing up on the first page for smaller companies. While Google reigns supreme in the search world, it will be intersting to see how the updates to Twitter’s search affect the SEO philosophy. Will it cause spam to become even more prevalent on Twitter? Judging by the new search’s reliance upon a Twitter user’s credibility, spammers probably won’t see much success. But then again, Google’s increasingly complex algorithm hasn’t deterred them.