A couple of days ago, Google Realtime Search went offline without letting the world know why. However, it has come to light that Realtime Search has indefinitely been shut off due to Google’s agreement with Twitter to carry its results having expired, essentially removing the bulk of the content of Google Realtime Search. Google sent an explanation to Search Engine Land regarding the service stoppage:
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 made sure to note that Realtime Search isn’t canceled forever, but disabled indefinitely, with plans to restore the service sometime in the future, which will include Google+ data along with content from other sources. Search Engine Land points out that Google Realtime Search carried results from a variety of sources, the biggest of which included Facebook fan page updates, Myspace updates, Google News links, and of course, the aforementioned Twitter feed.
Exactly why the agreement between Google and Twitter was allowed to expire has not yet been made clear, and the deal between the two seems beneficial for both parties, as Google’s entire service shut down when they lost the Twitter feed, and there’s no efficient way for people to find tweets even a couple of days old outside of Google Realtime Search.
Bing Social Search, what is essentially Microsoft’s version of Google Realtime Search, also has a deal with Twitter, but that deal doesn’t seem to have expired at this time. As with Google, a reason has yet to be given regarding why Microsoft’s deal remains intact, but Google’s does not.
(Search Engine Land via Techmeme)
