Search API vs Phoenix search (speed of indexing)

[Dan]

Hi,

I am developing a browser-based client side app that is making use of the search API.

I have noticed for certain terms, in the documented API it is very slow to index new tweets : e.g. right now the term 'Glazers' is trending in the UK, and the most recent tweet for that search term is six minutes old.

If I do the exact same search in new twitter (using the undocumented phoenix search - i.e: "http://twitter.com/phoenix_search.phoenix?..."), the most recent term is 53 seconds old (and there are many more newer than the most recent one returned from the search API)

So for this search term, phoenix is well ahead of the documented API.

The weird thing is for many other search terms they are returning results at the same speed (e.g. "George Harrison" right now)

Is this a (known ? ) bug?

Have twitter deliberately given themselves a superior API?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Aside: I know I could use the streaming API, but I am trying to write this client side, and the streaming API does not yet support web sockets, so I don't think this is an option right now. I know of the flash plugin ( http://mehack.com/twitter-streaming-api-from-javascript-with-a ) but that is only for "proofs of concept" right now, and there is no way of using oauth.

Cheers

Dan