Google Realtime Disappears as Twitter deal comes to an end

Not sure if you have noticed but the Google ‘realtime’ tab (and entire facility) has been removed from google worldwide..

This is the end of the integration of realtime results within the SERP’s also,  all brought about due to their contract with Twitter having come to an end.  Now the general feeling is that Google and Twitter will come to some sort of a deal, as Google was providing the search for twitter beyond a couple of days.

Twitter doesn’t have the capability to run search beyond a couple of days, although it does still have a contract with Bing! 😉

So what now I wonder?

According to Danny Sullivan Google have said

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.

Google also stressed that when it returns it will include a lot more variety and not just Google+ stating

Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.

When pushed about their deal with twitter, Google stated

Twitter has been a valuable partner for nearly two years, and we remain open to exploring other collaborations in the future.

Seems to my like a battle of the pinstripes and some hard nosed negotiating.

So this now makes google+ even more crucial than ever as a ranking signal. With twitter not there, Google are more than ever likely to rely on their own data streams from their network such as Google+ & Google +1 (confusing or what) 😀

Chatting to my friend Nikki Pilkington about this she gave me her thoughts:-

I find it ironic that Google pointed out that Microsoft missed the boat on the Internet and search, an I hope that Bill Gates is having the last laugh now it seems that Google are on the back-foot when it comes to social media.
Google letting the Twitter deal go in my opinion was the wrong thing to do – they would have been better off tightening up what they could there too

Real time search was their main weapon in beating the black hat SEOs, with a bit of work, but it seems their focus is now on gaining ground in social media rather than tightening up search.

I have to agree with Nikki here, and also say that the world of search and social are coming closer together, and any SEO ignoring social media as part of their overall Internet Marketing and SEO strategy is likely to have a rude awakening.