As the insiders have it, Google has struck a deal with Twitter. The search engine’s query results will soon display user content from the micro-blogging site according to Bloomberg. The deal means the 140-character messages written by Twitter users would be featured faster and more prominently in the Google search results.
The hope is that greater placement in Google’s search results could fetch more traffic to the micro-blogging platform. The tweets appeared on the search results before, though not in real time. Currently, Tweets do get indexed, but they appeared after Google crawled Twitter’s site through traditional methods.
However, going forward Google will have access to Twitter Firehose (APIs), that will enable to show tweets posted in near real-time.
Previously, Google did have access to Twitter’s firehose, however, in the new agreement, there will be more user engagement, which means there would be a definite increase in the advertising revenue. In the new deal, Google will pay a flat licensing fee for access to the data.
It is yet unclear how the terms of the latest arrangement differ from the previous one that ended in 2011.
According to a Bloomberg report, citing people with knowledge of the matter, tweets will be visible in Google search results as soon as they are posted, starting during the first half of the year. “Twitter and Google engineers have started working on the project,” the report added.
Their previous deal had expired in 2011, as the companies had not extended the licensing agreement, hence Twitter had cut off its feed from the search engine’s surface. Post the expiration; Google put the real-time search offline. Both Google and Twitter have declined to comment over the issue.
In the near past, Twitter has been seen striving hard to generate more users, as more engagement multiplies its revenue generation. It has also made an announcement in August stating that it would surface tweets for users even if they do not follow the accounts, again on the very similar intention grounds of higher engagements, promoting more tweets.
Last month, it also announced Recap, which is a feature that would recycle tweets deemed most relevant that were originally posted while users “were away” that they might not otherwise see. Increasing user engagement is being considered as a key by Twitter to woo investors. Due to these initiatives, in the third quarter, Twitter had 284 million users logging in at least once a day. It was a straight 23 percent higher sprint from the previous year.
News of the deal comes a day before Twitter is expected to report fourth-quarter earnings!
