Your Tweets Could Soon Be Streamed Into Google Searches

According to a recent Bloomberg report, an agreement has been made between Google and Twitter to index tweets – again. This comes after a similar deal which broke down back in 2011.

This means that Google will now be able to access Twitter’s Firehose – the stream of data generated by its users – so tweets will be visible in search results instantly, rather than Google having to crawl the network. This deal will allow Twitter to target logged-out users and engage with a larger audience.

It has been said that this could be introduced in the first half of 2015, although this has not been confirmed by either company.

Alongside this, Twitter this week announced its deal to target the audience of 500 million who aren’t signed up using promoted ads on Flipboard and Yahoo Japan. This again means more opportunities to expose its user content to logged-out users, so we could be seeing advertisements that look something like this very soon…

“For Google, we believe search results will be enhanced by access to real-time tweets and a much broader amount of content”. With the most recent news being discussed in read-time on Twitter, Google will benefit as they’ll be provided with more than 500 million new outlooks on current trends and news per day.

For businesses, does this mean future marketing could embark on a new path? With the exception of Twitter three and a half years ago, social media feeds haven’t before been implemented into Google searches so what impact could this have on our traffic flow?

Back in 2011, a typical Google search would’ve looked something like this:

With the top results displaying the most recent discussions regarding a particular topic you’re searching, older web pages may be irrelevant and outdated, right? This could reduce the amount of organic traffic reaching your site as people will see and click on to Twitter results before they see your result.

This could mean that businesses may benefit from putting that extra time and thought into what they’re posting on their Twitter account. Posting relevant content related to what people are searching for will have a positive impact on search results and advertising, at no cost to you.

However with 288 million active users monthly, the likelihood of your tweet being displayed in the Twitter results for a time span long enough to receive significant traffic seems almost non-existent.

There seems to be mixed reactions from those hearing about this partnership; from individuals feeling their privacy has been invaded to business representatives keen to get their content seen…

But what do you think of these changes? Will it be better for promoting your business or reduce your traffic? Only time will tell.