Foursquare’s checkin data holds a wealth of real-time information about the most popular places in an area. According to a report in the Telegraph, foursquare’s Dennis Crowley says they’re in talks to license that data to the major search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo.

“Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search,” Crowley said. “We can anonymize data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment. Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to – and where is trending – not what.”

All three search engines already offer a local search product that could be greatly enhanced with real-time information about the places that are most popular. Imagine if Google Maps had the ability to rank restaurants based on the number of checkins they have at the moment. Foursquare’s ability to provide real-time data is similar in many ways to the deals the search engines have to enhance their results with data from Twitter.

Foursquare is no stranger to all three of the major search engines. They already have a deal to provide data through their API to Bing’s foursquare Everywhere app, which shows checkins and tips on a Bing map. Bing also sponsored a badge for the World Cup. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley’s previous location-based venture was Dodgeball, an SMS service purchased — and subsequently closed — by Google. Yahoo was reportedly in talks to buy foursquare earlier this year, but those talks fell through.

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