Google Realtime search goes offline

Google’s two-year agreement with Twitter to show tweet results has expired, taking realtime search results offline. A spokesperson at Google confirmed the news with Search Engine Land.

Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2.

While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.

The actual deal with Twitter in late 2009 envisaged realtime results providing minute-by-minute news to searchers. Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President then wrote on the blog, "We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months."

The search behemoth seems to be planning to incorporate results from its own newly launched Google + instead of Twitter posts. Google + is Google’s attempt at bringing out a full service social media website, much on the lines of Facebook and Myspace. Google’s previous attempts at social media were futile, with Buzz and Wave not catching up with social media users. Social media analysts at Pipon Solutions believe that this move could pave the way for Google + to seriously challenge Facebook and Twitter. We welcome your comments on the latest developments.